Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Mark Poynter

Time to Investigate ‘Green’ Media Spin: Mark Poynter

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BIASED media coverage of natural resource use issues should be fertile ground for the ABC’s Media Watch, but despite efforts to draw their attention to this have displayed little or no inclination to cover it in the past. Then again, as some of the worst examples of biased coverage of environmental issues have emanated from the ABC, this is perhaps not so surprising.

Most notably, the double-episode of the ABC’s Australian Story – ‘Something in the Water’ in February 2010 – springs to mind. It claimed that eucalypt plantations occupying just 4% of a Tasmanian town’s water catchment were toxic to humans, animals, and marine life. Screened just 3-weeks before the Tasmanian state election, the program sparked a controversy that was not backed by credible science yet resulted in the unseating of the government’s Health Minister and quite likely contributed to the formation of the current Labor-Greens minority government which has a distinctly anti-forestry agenda.

If the ABC is to ever rid itself of the perception that it caters to a primarily Green-Left audience, its supposedly independent investigative journalists need to start examining the excesses of mainstream environmentalism and the damage it is doing both to the wider environment and regional and rural communities. A good start would be for Media Watch to investigate arguably the most prominent form of media spin which is seen on an almost daily basis – that is the coverage of natural resource usage promulgated at the behest of mainstream environmental groups.

Read more here: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13417

Saving Australia’s Forests for Carbon: Valid Science or Green Activism?

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Tasmania May 05 008 blogA RECENT Australian Government study of 115 key industries found that only the forestry sector was net carbon-positive. Yet, a major Wilderness Society campaign is advocating the closure of Australian timber industries to help mitigate climate change.

Their campaign revolves around research by scientists from the Australian National University Fenner School of Environment and Society who have found that large amounts of carbon reside in some Australian “old growth” forests. Environmental activists have shoe-horned this finding into their over-arching 40-year campaign to completely evict timber production from all Australian forests. Their rationale is that a total absence of timber harvesting will allow all forests to become “old growth” which will store maximum amounts of carbon.

This raises several important issues. First, closing a carbon-positive industry that is based on a renewable resource is hardly likely to reduce carbon emissions. Second, the capability of most forests to attain “old growth” is reliant on fire, irrespective of timber harvesting. And third, there is concern about the integrity of the Wilderness Society’s campaign and the key participatory role of several ANU scientists.

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The Cult of Celebrity and Tasmanian Forestry

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THE public hysteria surrounding the proposed Tasmanian pulpmill shows that the logging of native forests remains one of Australia’s hottest environmental topics. This is surprising given that sustainable wood production is now permitted within just a net 6 per cent portion of the nation’s public forests, it is highly regulated, and it is regarded as among the best managed in the world. As an environmental threat, the government’s Australia State of the Forests Report, regards logging as insignificant.

Despite this, it has become politically incorrect to support native hardwood production as a sensible and responsible use of a naturally renewable resource. Those who do so are routinely vilified as I was last week when a letter I had published in The Age newspaper drew responses that scorned me as an “industry apologist trying to keep us in the dark ages” and a “spin doctor” who “relies on the public being fools”.

In the past, I have also been described as a “mouthpiece for the logging industry” or the “pro-logging lobby”, which is apparently “blind to the bigger picture of global crisis”. I have been called a “forest raper” and a “pro-logging, anti-life person”. Others believe I am “motivated by short term greed” and “headed towards my own demise”. I am apparently one of those “people who can chop, hunt, maim, kill, exploit, dominate and destroy in the name of progress and jobs” and I have been likened to “the captain of the Titanic refusing to believe that your enterprise is fatally flawed”.

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National University fosters Forest Activism based on Ignorance: A Note from Mark Poynter

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A recent paper by economist Dr Judith Ajani of the Australian National University’s Fenner School of Environment and Society, states that:

Deforestation and the degradation of native forests account for an estimated 20 per cent of Australia’s annual net greenhouse gas emissions. Most of the degradation occurs via (wood) chip exports …

Pardon? This is completely at odds with the Department of Climate Change (formerly the Australian Greenhouse Office) whose website quotes figures based upon the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) showing that emissions from the “land use, land use change and forestry” sector comprise just 2.5 per cent of Australia’s annual greenhouse emissions.

Dr Ajani’s paper (ANU E-press, Agenda, Volume 15 No. 3) goes on to explain that her estimation of annual emissions from forest “deforestation and degradation” is compromised of 11-13 per cent from land clearing for agriculture, with 7 per cent (or 38 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent) from logging native forests.   However, this latter figure studiously excludes carbon capture by regenerated forests and, while said to be based on AGO figures, has actually been calculated by prominent “green” activist Margaret Blakers using a briefing paper from the Wilderness Society.

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Log a Tree, Sequest Some Carbon: Mark Poynter

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Only 10 percent of Victoria’s native forests are logged. Yet anti-logging campaigners are still unhappy, ramping up a campaign in conjunction with the upcoming state election to have the industry closed down completely.

Why anyone would oppose the sustainable harvest of such a small percentage of Victoria’s extensive native forest estate is difficult for me to understand. Then again I see both environmental and economic benefits in growing and cutting down trees as part of the active management of a native forest.

In ‘Campaigners can’t see forest for trees’ Mark Poynter* expains the value of logging in terms of carbon sequestration:

“Sustainable logging in Victoria’s designated wood production zones produces about 1.5 million cubic metres of hardwood sawlogs and residual logs a year from an estimated total harvested biomass of about 2.1 million cubic metres, including roots, bark, branches and foliage. The concept of sustainability dictates that annually harvested amount is replaced by an equivalent volume of growth.

Carbon sequestered each year in new biomass growth in Victoria’s production zones is estimated to be equivalent to saving 2.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. This is net of emissions from fuel and power use inherent to timber production and emissions from the regeneration process. It is also additional to the carbon that could have been sequestered if the forest had alternatively been left unlogged.

Putting this into perspective is that clean energy produced from Victorian wind farms has been estimated to save 250,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year. Put another way, if anti-logging campaigns were to close Victoria’s native forest timber industry, 10 times as many wind turbines as now exist would be required just to make up for the carbon sequestration lost by “locking up” wood production forests.

Enhanced carbon sequestration is only part of the “greenhouse” benefit of sustainable logging. Australian domestic hardwood production also offsets imports of tropical hardwoods and the use of steel, aluminium and concrete that offer poor environmental outcomes.”

Read the full article, click here .

If 10 times as many wind turbines would be required to offset the locking up of wood production in the 10 percent of the forest that is still harvested, how much more carbon could be sequested if government allowed logging in say 30 percent of the forest estate? Not to mention the potential environmental and economic benefits.

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Mark Poynter is a forestry consultant, member of the Institute of Foresters of Australia and a member of the Australian Environment Foundation (AEF). His slide show entitled ‘Saving Australian Forests, A Counter-Productive Indulgence’ given at the recent AEF conference can be viewed by clicking here.