Net zero is nonsense

When the Federal Government announced its net zero plan last year it said that it wanted to deliver 119 million tonnes of carbon reductions from reforestation and sequestration on farming land.

The broad idea is that we reduce farm production, allow trees to grow and that sucks carbon out of the air, lowers the temperature of the globe and saves the polar bears.

The 119 million tonne reduction is not a small amount.

Last year Australia emitted around 440 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

So, the Labor Party is planning to use a reduction in farm production to get a third of the reductions needed to get to “net zero”.

What was worse was Labor taking a shoot first, ask questions later approach.

When they announced larger reductions in Australia’s emissions, Labor could not say how much land would be lost to farming production to reach net zero.

Why would they commit to a target without knowing how much agricultural production would be lost?

Finally, two months after deciding on a target, a government agency has estimated what it all means for farming.

ABARES is the Government’s premier advisory body on agriculture and, as expected, they found that net zero means less farming production and more of our productive land locked up.

They found that carbon farming projects would lock up 18 million hectares of farming land.

Tasmania is six million hectares in size.

So, to reach net zero we would need to take three Tasmania’s worth of farming out of production.

Net zero is nonsense.

ABARES found that the reduction in farming land would lower farm output by $2.8 billion by 2050.

Because the government supports net zero, ABARES ties themselves in knots to argue that $2.8 billion is not that much to worry about.

They say that agricultural production will still grow by 39 per cent to 2050 even with carbon farming.

But $2.8 billion means a $30,000 hit for every Australian farmer on average.

This is a 2 per cent reduction in farm income.

The problem is that many farmers would have profit margins below 2 per cent.

So, this so called “small” reduction in revenue could mean the difference of a family staying on their farm.

Imagine the reaction if we decide to cut the salary of every public servant by 2 per cent to restore our nation’s woeful finances?

You would never hear the end of it, but when it comes to what Canberra imposes on the nation’s productive classes, they are told to suck it up for the greater good.

Indeed, ABARES analysis suggests that 40 per cent of those areas that carbon farm will shut down all agricultural production.

The problem here is that while the farmers will get paid to do this, there are not really any jobs in “carbon farming”.

There is no compensation for the truck drivers, fencing contractors and other farm workers who will be out of a job when trees replace cows on farms.

The carbon farming projects will not be in remote and arid parts of Australia because in those areas you do not get much tree growth and hence you do not reduce carbon enough to make it worthwhile.

Over half of the farming land lost will be in our high rainfall areas near the coast or in our productive wheat-sheep zone.

Why would we take away the most productive land in our nation from growing food to making carbon credits?

This is where the “net” in net zero hits the ground. Australia’s emissions targets are not about getting rid of all emissions-creating activities.

Over the past 20 years, more than 90 per cent of Australia’s emissions reductions have not come from the climate conscious city people driving less, flying less or air-conditioning their homes less.

Our reductions have not come from eating less meat they have come from producing less meat as we have converted farmland to producing carbon credits.

None of this will lower the temperature of the globe but it will make us poorer.