You could be forgiven for missing it, but on the Friday afternoon before Christmas, federal environment minister Greg Hunt released the draft details of the Emissions Reduction Fund – the centrepiece of the government’s Direct Action climate policy.

The Direct Action plan is crucial if Australia is to meet its modest emissions goal of a 5% reduction on 2000 levels by 2020. But this first draft is beset by loopholes that could mean the plan delivers less bang for its 1.5 billion bucks over the next four years.

There are three standout problems. First, there is a risk that money will be given to carbon-reduction projects that would have gone ahead anyway, thus taking funding away from other projects. Second, the way emissions reductions are calculated could potentially penalise those who have already made cuts, while the most intense polluters might be spared from having to bring themselves into line with industry best practice. And third, companies that fail to meet their emissions pledges could be given long deadlines to put it right, with only minor financial penalties.


More Here :

http://theconversation.com/three-major-loopholes-in-the-direct-action-climate-pl...

Dnarever wrote on Jan 18^th, 2014 at 7:11am:


thats pretty much how I had it figured too!

If the Libs continue to treat the atmosphere like an open sewer it will come back to bite them at the next election.
Three more years of record disasters and soaring temperatures will show them up for the short term political opportunists that they are.

woody2014 wrote on Jan 18^th, 2014 at 9:08am:


You do realise that this has been going on for over 100 yrs so its no surprise that those records occurred within the warming period we were warned about since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
None of this is new...

adelcrow wrote on Jan 18^th, 2014 at 9:11am:


Do you have a link to the warnings back to the beginning OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION   

woody2014 wrote on Jan 18^th, 2014 at 9:17am:


The existence of the greenhouse effect was argued for by Joseph Fourier in 1824. The argument and the evidence was further strengthened by Claude Pouillet in 1827 and 1838, and reasoned from experimental observations by John Tyndall in 1859, and more fully quantified by Svante Arrhenius in 1896.[12][13]
In 1917 Alexander Graham Bell wrote “[The unchecked burning of fossil fuels] would have a sort of greenhouse effect”, and “The net result is the greenhouse becomes a sort of hot-house.”[14][15] Bell went on to also advocate for the use of alternate energy sources, such as solar energy.[16]

Not quite the start of the industrial revolution, but definitely during.

The worlds moved on and its time the right wing denialists and their political masters did the same

True Blue... wrote on Jan 18^th, 2014 at 11:42pm:



Nothing wrong with planting some trees. Problem is that we would need to plant enough trees to impact food production to get any benefit. Then there it the question of what trees how mature and where do you get more than 10 Million trees just to start ? Seedlings are cheap but won't impact for decades more mature trees are expensive to buy and costly in every stage? Still take a decade to produce results.

How much do these trees cost how much does it cost to plant them where do we plant them how many die who maintains them how will this impact wildlife and the environment.

Yep go and plant a tree and the problem is solved.

And then that 10 Million trees is a very modest beginning many times that number would be required.