Exposing Australia's Smoke and Mirrors Climate Diplomacy | Good COP Bad Cop

The Australia Institute's  Richie Merzian and Alia Armistead discussion of the smoke and mirrors climate diplomacy by Australia over a long term, including The Australia clause. 

Australia's deception about its LULUCF forestry

Australia makes use of Land Use, Land Use change and Forestry (LULUCF) credits as part of its national emissions profile while most countries do not include this area of emissions. We have done this since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol Agreement when we threatened to wreck the agreement if these emissions weren't included. Subsequently a clause to allow counting of these emissions was included, and it was colloquially known as the Australia clause.

Australia has long used this clause based on land use emissions in the past to allow a target for Australia  to actually grow our emissions, while nearly all other nations had targets to reduce their emissions.

So Australia has cruised along without doing much work in any other sector in decarbonisation, based upon historical reduction in Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry emissions.

Pretty shonky and hardly fair.

A recent remote sensing study has highlighted even further the shonky nature of carbon accounting in LULUCF emissions. The study is called 'Annual Maps of Forests in Australia from Analyses of Microwave and Optical Images with FAO Forest Definition', published 23 August.

The Australia Clause and Kyoto Carryover Credits demystified

Worth watching this for demystification of The Australia clause and Australia's Kyoto Credits.

Close your ears children for an Honest Australien Government ad on use of Kyoto Carryover Credits.

No, really. This really does cut through all the bullshit and explain how Australia has cheated the global community, and ourselves, for ther last 23 years.

Most other countries see through the bullshit. While they have set targets to actually reduce emissions, Auustralia was allowed to increase our emissions. No wonder Scott Morrison was not given an invite to speak at Climate Ambition Summit tonight (1am-6am) when Australia offers exactly zero ambition.

Watch the video:

Thanks The Juice Media for an excellent piece of demystification