On this day 26 years ago,
“Australia is preparing to host a major international meeting of environment ministers to broaden global acceptance of forests as a source of carbon credits.
But the meeting comes at a time when the ability of forests to actually generate these credits is increasingly in scientific doubt.
The High Level Forum on Sinks will be held in Perth from April 17-20.”
Hordern, N. 2000. Australia pushes carbon sinks. The Australian Financial Review, March 3, p.16.
And
Australia is being accused of deliberately “stacking” a conference of international environment ministers in Perth next week in a bid to undermine the global goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The conference, starting on Monday, is about the use of “sinks” or the planting of trees to gain credits, a suggestion under the Kyoto Protocol which could be used to offset countries’ inability to reduce emissions from industry and motor vehicles.
Australia has invited ministers from around the world, but stands accused of inviting only countries sympathetic to its own position on sinks.
Germany and other European countries which are of the view that overuse of sinks could encourage countries not to reduce emissions have been left out.
An Australian Greenhouse Office paper on the conference reveals that only “key members of the European Union”, Finland, France, the UK and The Netherlands, were invited.
Greenpeace’s international policy director, Mr Bill Hare, yesterday accused the Federal Government of stacking the conference. Mr Hare said Tuvalu and other Pacific nations were also not invited, when small Pacific States were likely to be most in danger from sea level rises caused by the greenhouse effect.
Clennel, A. 2000. Greenhouse Gas Conference `stacked’. Sydney Morning Herald, April 15, p.15.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 369ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that Australia’s political elites had been warned about carbon dioxide build up as a problem, repeatedly, by scientists, by spooks, by journalists, by politicians, and they had ignored it all. They had carved themselves a spectacular deal at the Kyoto conference, and there were a whole load of people who wanted to make money from selling carbon credits, plant a tree in Australia and get paid for doing so by some Japanese or Korean polluter who doesn’t want to cut their own emissions. Ker-ching!
The only fly in that ointment being that for you to be able to engage in carbon trading, your country’s government would have to have ratified Kyoto. Now at this point, it wasn’t clear what would happen, because if the Americans did ratify Kyoto, the pressure on the Australians to do so would be enormous.
And therefore it made sense, in 2000 to be holding these sorts of conferences and pushing these sorts of lines.
A year later, once the Bush administration had pulled out that particular balloon lost all its air. Though, it’s fair to say as well that the so-called Sydney’s Futures Exchange didn’t even last that long.
The specific context was that
What I think we can learn from this is that some people dreamed of global carbon trading. Never happened.
What happened next: Bush pulled out of Kyoto. Australia pulled out of Kyoto. Kyoto looked dead. The whole carbon credits thing looked dead. And then in 2004 Russia Duma ratified the Kyoto Protocol, bringing it into force and the whole UNFCCC circus sprang/staggered back into life.
Also on this day
April 17, 1981 – David Burns writes in New York Times about trouble ahead – All Our Yesterdays
April 17, 1993 – Paul Keating versus the idea of a carbon tax…
April 17, 2007 – UN Security Council finally discusses the most important security issue of all…