Greens MP Ian Cohen today said that the NSW Government’s submission to the Federal Government’s green paper on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme lacks environmental integrity.
“The governments response is heavily weighed towards the protection of the coal industry and fails to recognise the role of the forest industry in protecting the current culture in Forestry. The submission also ignores the vital role of maintaining carbon in the biomass and soil. Forests are a biobank integral to the global warming debate”, said Mr Cohen.
“The new NSW government under Rees and Tebbutt need to do more to distance themselves from the half-hearted denialism endemic to the Costa/Iemma regime and adopt real climate strategies,” said Mr Cohen.
“This government, in their submission, supports the opting-in of reforestation but does not go far enough. The Government’s submission talks about the CPRS covering, “greenhouse emissions only and that other measures be used to monitor and regulate biodiversity and water impacts”, said Mr Cohen.
‘What the Government fails to do is state what those other measures to monitor and regulate biodiversity should be. They have missed an opportunity to show leadership in this area and instead spend a good part of the report focusing on the possible implications to investor confidence”. Said Mr Cohen.
“Tebbutt says, “Failure to provide direct assistance to strongly affected industries that have previously invested in good faith sends a strong sovereign risk to prospective investors, regardless of whether they intend investing in fossil-fuel or renewable energy plants”.
”Their submission is focused on maximising asset value and investor confidence and it forgets to take into account that we need responsible climate change mitigation now”, said Mr Cohen.
“The bottom line for this Government is investor confidence not the protection of our forests and the carbon reservoir they represent”, said Mr Cohen.
No comments:
Post a Comment