Greenpeace slams Howard on Kyoto

[rand corp]

TITP:
Nothing to do with our geography? Now you are really joking. Due to the shear size and nature of our country, we have higher greenhouse emissions. Simply because of the Distance between our Major Cities! This cannot be overcome by signing a stupid useless peice of paper in Japan just because Greenpeace says so.

Amazingly daft: The United States is almost the same size as Australia in terms of land mass and they have around 280 million more people to travel around in it. So to suggest that our should be high because of the size of our country and our need to travel around is plainly stupid.

TITP:
So, lets stop cutting down forests and then we will see how Australia goes shall we? Ill tell you what will happen. No houses will be able to be built because nearly every house in Australia has some sort of wood in it. Or better still we can Import all our wood from Malaysia (unsustainable resources) whilst yet again Australians lose jobs and our forigen debit increases! I dont think so! Ild love to know where you are getting your information from Rand because it is fundamentally INCORRECT.

Ah, here we go again, fabricating the argument to win a fabricated point. Where on earth do I suggest there should be no timber industry in Australia. Hystrionocs. Now whose information is incorrect or perhaps purely fabricated.


TIIP:
Again misguided information! By the way, its the Kyoto Protocol. The protocol came around because certain countries were sick of other countries getting better deals out of the sale of Oil, etc. Thats the real reason behind it all. Dont be misguided by left "green" information.

Semantics! Amazingly dellusional, where do you get your information? How can you support such a ridiculous claim?

The initial path that led to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992) and ultimately the Kyoto Protocol (1997) was the
1970's discovery that CFC's were threatening the ozone shield. Once the science was accepted, concerted international action followed relatively quickly, with the signing of the Montreal Protocol in 1985 (to ban CFC's). This was followed by the setting up of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who have to date delivered 3 assessment reports involving the work of 122 lead authors, 515 contributing authors and 337 experts. The panel was set up in 1988 by the United Nations largely in response to the dramatic findings of osone shield depletion, rising global temperatures and emmerging iregularities in weather patterns. In 1990, the IPCC reported that the threat to climate change was real and a global treaty was needed to deal with it. The Rio Earth Summit was held the same year and once the framework was agreed upon (which took years) the Kyoto Protocol followed (1997).

The Protocol calls for 39 developed nations to limit or reduce their emmissions by 2012. The limits or reductions were designed to reduce total emissions from the developed nations to a level at least 5% below 1990 levels. The national targets however, vary, with Australia being allowed to go over 1990 levels.

Lets say that Australia signed this protocol. What would happen?

1) Petrol prices would rise higher. We would need to cut our 'greenhouse' emissions. How would we do that? By implementing another tax on fuel to try and get people to not use it.

- why would you think that utilizing alternatives to petrol would push up the price when oil prices today are held high by an inability of the major producers to meet current and growing demand!?! Why would you think that using less petrol would result in another tax going onto it!?!

-1.) Toxic emissions would be reduced preserving the atmosphere and saving thousands of lives.

2) Hundreds of thousands of people in Industral Blue Colar jobs would be sacked or retrenched. This includes people in foresty, building, manufacturing and mineing.

-Hundreds of thousands of jobs would also be created in areas of alternative production. To suggest that the building industry would not have timber nor that it does not have alternatives to timber anyway is again fabrication facts to support a fabricated argument.

-2.) The future of mankind would be preserved and yes, they would all have the equal opportunity to go out and seek employment.

3) Due to job losses, our economy would suffer. There would be more demand on welfare, and less people to contribute to it.

-Where are these job losses of which you speak, pure scare tactics and totally unsupportable!?! No one is calling for a complete seccassion of the timber industry here and if companies were forced to manage the resouce properly it might even lead to more jobs.

-3.) Does it make economic sense to invest $14.20 today to not lose $100 in 40 years time. Because that is the true economic cost of signing on to the Protocol as estimated by Lomborg and generally accepted as the most accurate assessment. Again with the fabricated scare tactics. Why are people always sh1t frightened of what they don't know or change even if it is for the better simply because they don't understand it.

So, in other words, it would totally f**k our country!

And raping the country of its natural resouces without replenishment, refusing to address the globally recognized problem of climate change and maintaing a f$%k you Jack I'm alright attitude won't!?!


Stop it TIIP your irony is killing me.

Its not a question of "smelling the carbon" rand, its a case of weighing up the pros (supposed reduction of greenhouse) and the cons (the slaghtering of the Australian Economy).

-Slaughtering the country and nearly everyone in it or slaughtering the economy as a name for economic adjustment, you call it as you see it chum!

Some environmentalists would prefer we all move back to the bush, live in Bark Humpys and run around in loincloths all day.

-Some rampant industrialist think we can go on using up all the resources available to us without replenishing them and nothing will come of it.

Others like me, see that the forests and mines, etc are there to be used and managed in a sustainable manner.

-Its the fact that they are not managed 'sustainably' that is the very reason we have ended up with something like the Kyoto Protocol. To suggest that the whole world is wrong and picking on us is a bit daft.

We could go and clearfell this whole country, from the Daintree, to the Northern NSW rainforests, through to the High Country, and Gipsland, to the Dandinongs, and right down to the Old Growth Forests in Tasmania and let it rot.

Or as an alternate, we can manage these resources in a sustainable manner, by using plantations (which is in place in Tasmania and Victoria and NSW) which are re planted and then chopped down again.

Theres no two ways about it, we need timber. Its better to re plant and sustain then it is to cut and burn (the accepted method in Brazil).
Australia leads the world in Sustainable Forests. Even Canada looks up to Australia and follows our lead.

-Again you are trying to make the basis for the argumant against not signing the Kyoto Protocol (the initial discussion) solely about the management of forests and timber in Australia. This is a small, yet significant aspect of a much bigger topic. And again you are saying I advocate no timber and no timber industry, why you do this I am not sure.

-That the timber industry and their propogandists have managed to delude the public and themselves with a very effective and expensive campaign does not mask the fact that we do not manage them very well at all. That we do it better than some others is no great thing to hang our hats on. We must also ask why are these countries raping their forests and where is the end product going. Or, in other words, who is putting up the money for such attrocities to occur.

Not bad for a country that just over 250 years ago still had people living in tents after getting off a ship from England.

-So after 250 years our crowning acheivement is that we have migrated from tents are very good at chopping wood!

-I think you'll find that people lived in Australia for thousands of years before a bunch of poms jumped of a boat and camped out in tents, we haven't done very well with the way we have treated them either.

Taking a 'time-sliced' view of these issues really doesn't give intelligence to an argument that is much broader. With outcomes that will reach far into the future and must be looked at in the context of everything that has come before and all the possibilities and consequences of what might lay ahead.

[CQ]

I havent really bothered to read the whole rant because its just too long. But TITP, it isnt good for the forests to be cut down, once theyve been cut it destablises the environment, rainfall etc, therefore not as much rain falls AND then the trees dont grow back as well.

as for fires, they dont come through very often, and when they do the trees dont DISAPPEAR they grow back, not from seed but the original tree. Australian trees like fire, because they can withstand it. They cant withstand a fkn bulldozer.

Did you know that one fifth of native birds and one THIRD of mammals NEED tree hollows to live in and escape danger? Thats a shitload of our animals there.

I wonder how many of these hollows would be in NEW growth forests? Bugger all is my guess.

So TITP don't try and tell me how good it is for forests to be cut down.

[CQ]