PLEA Network

11 July 2017, The Guardian, No wonder the government tries to hide its emissions reports. They stink. Last Friday, the Australian government finally released the latest greenhouse gas emissions report, showing emissions have risen in the past year. When excluding emissions from land use, 2016 saw Australia release a record level of CO2 into the atmosphere. It confirms the failure of the government’s environmental policy at a time when electricity prices – despite the absence of a carbon price – continue to rise at levels above inflation. The government has a history of being scared to release the greenhouse gas reports. Last year it released the March 2016 and June 2016 reports on the Thursday before Christmas – not exactly peak viewing time. It also meant the March report was released nine months after the March quarter had actually finished. And once again the government held off releasing the latest report. But in a level of coincidence equal to that of Bill Heslop running into Deirdre Chambers in the Porpoise Split Chinese restaurant, on the day that the Australian Conservation Foundation released FOI documents showing that the government had been sitting on the report for more than a month, the government released the latest report. And in an effort that rather stretches the meaning of “quarterly”, the government “incorporated” the September quarter figures into the December report. It says something about how poorly this government values the issue of climate change that over a month ago we had the figures on the entire production that occurred in Australia during the first three months of this year, and yet here we are in July and we still only know the level of greenhouse gas emissions up to December last year. The figures in the report quickly made it obvious why the government has held off releasing them. They stink. And as every report since June 2014 has shown, the end of the carbon price has led to an increase in emissions. The poor departmental officials try to paint a happy picture. The release leads with the line that “total emissions for Australia for the year to December 2016 (including Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry) are estimated to be 543.3 Mt CO₂-e.” They note that this is 2.0% below emissions in 2000, and 10.2% below emissions in 2005. Oddly, they don’t note that is it 1.0% above the emissions in 2015. The inclusion of land use, land use change and forestry is a fairly dodgy measure. Read More here