Experts criticise Australia's most popular carbon offset scheme | 7.30

Carbon credits are intended to help neutralise the emissions of Australia's biggest polluters and they're integral to meeting climate targets but there are fresh claims that the nation's most popular emission offset lacks integrity.
The scheme's former watchdog gave evidence to Labor's national conference about the controversial carbon farming method. This report from Ashlynne McGhee and Hannah Meagher.
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[@user-dq2ym1nn9k]

I was "employed" to plant 7 million trees to "offset carbon" on property in the west australian wheatbelt area. It was an absolute shitshow. The pay rate was great but honestly I have doubts even 20% of the tree stock survived with how badly prepared and organised everything was.... not to mention severe lack of rainfall in general in those parts. It's a rort

[@hokitika4888]

Obviously it's a rort ,let the gullibles pay for it ,leave the rest of us out of it

[@jonymanay]

As lame as the outcome sounds. Even if a few hundred or thousand tress grow and stand long after your gone. At least you done something worthwhile in my opinion. And id say the carbon credit thing is a con.

[@ashdog236]

I’m sure you were planting native trees and shrubs that should be used to low rainfall, remember the rainfall in central Aus is LOW, not zero.

[@user-dq2ym1nn9k]

@@ashdog236 yes. I have 30 years lived experience of living in the area in which we planted so I know rainfall and I know drought. The year of planting preceded 7 years of drought. Not uncommon but not great. The stock was native, however the machinery to plant was incorrectly set, meaning the plants were laid in the pre-prepared furrows however their roots were not buried - just laid and left exposed. There was alot of headscratching by the person contracted to get the plants 'in the ground' however I'm pretty sure his payment relied on 'per piece' so the whole operation continued with the plants not even planted. It was interesting to me

[@Veryconfusedbywar]

Yeah done a charity one in the same area at least trees will grow there. Thats a start.

[@audiosquirrel8024]

Time for a royal commission into this crap?

[@alyssaoconnor]

And time for actual consequences when deceit/incompetence is found.

[@lifeinaustralia6415]

Would take to long. Just jail the lot of them.

[@Underliquid]

One of the biggest scams in Aus. Overlay the projects shown in this map with a map displaying the highest amount of carbon in the soil and you can see that these areas are the worst places in Aus to "farm carbon". Please go and film these spots again during a drought and we will see just how ineffective these "carbon farms" are. Also seeing a 4x4 with carbon friendly on the side makes you think 🤔 oh well just offset it, she'll be right!! Loony!

[@TS-kb6lv]

if we were at all serious about it we would be planting mangroves for true carbon storage.

[@ledpup]

@@TS-kb6lv if we were serious, we'd slow then stop CO2-equivalent emissions. Offsets are a scam

[@infernalstan886]

The carbon in plants comes from CO2 in the air, not the soil 😅

[@kohl34]

Carbon credits seem well intentioned, but when you have big corporations eager to pay big money to absolve their carbon footprint… it’s bound to become a rort

[@davidpearn4344]

This is the biggest con job ever locking up millions of hectares and destroying communties with no jobs

[@Bennie32831]

Exactly what it is

[@123wsdf]

This is such great journalism on a massively important issue. Thank you for covering this!!

[@emcats84]

Ahahahahaha.

[@marcusluciani1620]

All this green stuff is a sham.

[@gjlite4947]

Who "independently "audits" this program? Another consultancy corporation?

[@andrewm190E]

Let me guess...🤔 The auditing was done by the big 4 auditors (KPMG, PWC..etc) who also audit and advise the big corporations that buy the carbon credits....🙄

[@boskymba]

The Big 4 do provide this auditing service indeed. None require on-ground monitoring of outcomes to compare with reality - it is all modelling-based.

[@johnerbacher7124]

There is a massive omission in this piece. Projects using the impugned Human Induced Regeneration methodology will no longer be able to be registered from 30 September. It boggles the mind that the journalist did not know this/chose not to include this.

[@boskymba]

Existing sites that they reported on will be able to continue though, right?

[@historychannel365]

The number of rorts in Australia right now is so high that I can hardly keep up.

[@infernalstan886]

Wouldn't 600,000 credits at $36 each be $21.6mil not $10mil?

[@deadpanfish]

Maybe that's the didgeridoo to dollar exchange rate.

[@I_hate_Vegemite]

There is a share of the Carbon Credit dollars between the pastoralist and the Carbon Farming broker … the company that typically establishes, manages and assesses/reports the carbon sequestration project under the Human Induced Regeneration Method. Maybe $10m was the pastoralists share?

[@Rawkus919]

How much can I earn if I don't mow my backyard grass?

[@Bennie32831]

Nothing they pocket those

[@DarkVader-jj4dt]

There are so many carbon rorts in Australia right now it's hard to keep up with them all, it's become a industry for the polluters to keep on polluting. Australia likes to look like it's doing something while it's actually doing nothing.

[@emcats84]

Oh, they are doing something. Destroying the middle-class and creating a nation of serfs.

[@asheronwindspear552]

Australia should have gone with the Rudd emissions reduction plan rather than caving and going ahead with this rort.

[@infernalstan886]

I wouldn't mind getting paid $36/tonne of stored carbon for no work 😅

[@crowmack]

It's all pointless when Co2 levels are rising faster than they ever have before.

[@daskurka]

Oh yeah, total carbon capture is what 0.1% of emissions world wide. Offsets is just window dressing so we don't have to change because we are doing "something". Meaningful change is closing coal mines.

[@helenslattery4356]

This happened on kangaroo island and poorly maintained Forrest for carbon credit made a large contribution to fuel of the bush fires.

[@davidhart5344]

Good journalism right here

[@jeffstorer]

With 17 new coal and gas projects just approved, better keep planting trees fella's

[@micled93]

One bush fire, and that's all back in the atmosphere.

[@MichaelSalaA]

Abc enabled comments?!

[@davidhart5344]

right? i personally was downvoting good videos just because disabled comments. They may have also decided that engagement in videos helps your vide0

[@asheronwindspear552]

Not uncommon for their News In-depth channel.

[@infernalstan886]

@@davidhart5344 they tend to only allow them on less controversial topics - they even turned off comments on this week's episode of Media Watch

[@sarcasmo57]

We need to do more about climate change now.

[@freshfordagriculturehub6429]

Here is a crazy idea....reduce emissons...

[@christopherscobie]

Looks a bit dry. Get fires there?

[@Veryconfusedbywar]

Reducing the usage of carbon is the only solution carbon offset schemes are always going to attract gold diggers. Can't be regulated.

[@Veryconfusedbywar]

Wow no chance of corruption when this was set up😂😂

[@jacksonwoodburne]

I support planting trees....but what about further regulating emissions as well? Doesn't this scheme just allow polluters to feel good about themselves? What am i missing?

[@6rand0nhen9]

Were the auditors one of the big 4 ? Perhaps the same consultants that advised on the legislation as well 😅

[@lours6993]

As an Australian living in Europe, it's embarrassing trying to explain Australia's lack of action on climate change, especially when it is one of the first to suffer the consequences... And it seems the best we manage is 'green-washing.'

[@user-hg4th5cq1e]

You only need one of two things to happen. You can either offset emissions through carbon projects or you can reduce emissions via changing behaviour. This is done through a carbon price which has been kept low for emitters! Why are emitters that exceed their caps have two years to offset their emissions? Both levers are being used to manipulate price and ‘appear’ to be reducing national emissions. This is a greenwashing government.

[@Watto3631]

More like scam lol

[@keepitreal2902]

It was set up as a scam by the LNP, then deliberately continued by Labor. Both as bad as eachother.

[@deadpanfish]

One fire.

[@pronoia.]

Has anyone got some suggestions for this problem? Like key performance indicators, a quantifiable measure of performance over time for a specific objective. Could create a betting market on the results to get more people involved. I would also argue there is more than 1 way to regenerate land and store carbon, rather than fencing it off and not touching it. 1 way might even involve grazing holistically to develop microbiology and soil activity that stores carbon and also include small landholders to participate.

[@derrickheng564]

There is a Miyawaki method. It allows us to grow a forest fast and has been a proven technique since 1970s. Fun fact, Japan has over-forestation problem.

[@johnerbacher7124]

This is a methodology. It is known as soil carbon.

[@anywhereroam9698]

There’s many types supported by CER. This reporting is just focusing on one type. There’s many projects for each type. It is good for there to be scrutiny to make sure the projects and credits are legit. To accurately measure their outcomes and to continually improve the process and methods.

[@aaax9410]

People that have expensive cars disobey road rules all the time (fines so what) carbon credits same thing nothing is being fixed by this

[@alanong5558]

carbon pollution is a myth.

[@johndehaan2764]

Plantation wood is a much better carbon offset. Besides, places like this are in fact carbon negative because it will eventually just burn and or die in a drought, and we lose the food resource as well further impoverishing the nations economic diversity.

[@stockdog743]

Until the timber is harvested

[@allon33]

Pure Fantasy.

[@numodular]

Unfortunately; the fossil fuels industry has shifted far more weight of accountable corrections, onto increasingly pressured people and systems that have less and less time to adapt. Likewise, since global warming is equally increasing to global "boiling"; the process of tree carbon capture must accelerate to bringing carbon to ground faster. This can be done in farming wood instead of the more carbon penalizing cement process in building, along with geopolymers; but this kind of system needs proximity to transporting said wood to residential areas, which requires complimentary sustainable transport. At root; the US is more responsible for these increasingly arduous problems, dating back to when Nixon mothballed the Thorium Reactor program at Oak Ridge, in favor of pursuing the far more fossil fuel-based Plutonium bomb initiative. They even massively distorted a grease contamination in a heat exchanger, into a critical corrosion problem in the nuclear core, easily deceiving the general public into accepting the scrapping of the project. This is one of the main reasons why Thorium Reactor tech has been so difficult to reproduce worldwide, such as India's 3 stage program with cost overruns that could easily have been scaled, if the US and the Nixon Administration didn't cave into greed and abuse of power. Standard error correction via scientific method would've accelerated worldwide proliferation of this baseload energy, and most of these cascading effects would be moot.

[@frankblangeard8865]

And then wildfire will burn all those regenerated trees and put the carbon right back into the atmosphere. Australia is the world's second largest exporter of coal.

[@Bennie32831]

Climate friendly the only thing i see them doing is burning diesel 😂😂

[@JohnBall-wx3nb]

The big winners will be the feral goats. No cattle to compete with, no farmers to keep them under control and plenty to eat. What a rort.

[@peppipoohductionswakashunt3157]

Don’t forget the pigs, rabbits and dogs, they’ll make a true paradise for ferals

[@Bennie32831]

Such a rort