In a recent Media Release the North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) condemned the Labor Party for its plans to develop a bioenergy industry to burn native forests for electric power.
“Federal Labor's climate change
policy released today is potentially disastrous for Australia's
native forests,” said NEFA spokesperson Susie Russell.
“In a week where we've seen even
the National Party Federal Agriculture Minister recognise the
importance of forests in sequestering carbon, the Labor Party has
completely ignored one of country's most important carbon capture and
storage systems, its forests.
“Worse than that, they have
pledged millions of dollars to develop a bioenergy industry both here
and via exports. The only current fuel source of scale for bioenergy
is native forests. The burning of wood for electricity is a major
international perversion of greenhouse gas accounting rules, that
sees it counted as a no emission energy, when in reality it produces
more carbon dioxide than coal for the same amount of energy produced,
as well as removing the trees needed to absorb the carbon released,”
she said.
“We know the NSW Government is full
steam ahead with a logging regime that will see hundreds of thousands
of tonnes of trees from our forests, available for export. We know
that Boral and Forestry Corporation of NSW along with other State
government logging agencies went to Japan offering our forests to
meet Japan's growing bioenergy demand.
“Now we have the Federal Labor party
pledging to throw money at an industry that will devastate our
forests, dry out our catchments, push our native wildlife closer to
extinction and increase our carbon emissions while removing the very
trees we need to take up the carbon we release.
“To say we are disappointed with
Labor's backflip over burning native forests for electricity is an
understatement. We're devastated. We thought Labor really understood
the climate change issue, but they've completely missed the elephant
in the room.
“We will be withdrawing our ads from
circulation that suggest Labor will do something about forest
destruction. All they've got on offer is a Forestry Summit and a
Forestry Industry Strategy. There's nothing there for those of us who
see forests as more than wood,” Ms Russell said
