“Australia, which threatened not to accept any limit on its emissions, was made an offer too good to refuse. First came a licence to increase its emissions by 8%. Then, in the final hours, it won an amendment that allows it to benefit massively from past deforestation… Up to 30% of its CO2 emissions in 1990, the baseline date for the targets, were from deforestation. But far from being penalised for this, Australia won the right to count any improvement from this position as a carbon credit. It just has to make sure it doesn’t cut down quite as many.”

@Fiona Ryan – Thanks for this comment. In order to get below the 2 degree target we have to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels and reduce or stop emissions from forests. The problem with offsets is that they do not reduce emissions. Please see this response to another offsets apologist. You may be correct that REDD offset credits may not flood the market. But who really knows? Markets are not very predictable. When the price of carbon is cheap companies buy credits for future expansions of polluting operations. The price of carbon fell as a result of the global economic crisis. Emissions fell. When the economy recovers, companies will simply start up the machinery again.

The price of carbon is currently too cheap to make a difference:

“The International Energy Agency has warned that the price of carbon credits will have to more than double from the levels they now trade at in Europe to make high-tech solutions to climate change economically attractive.

Deutsche Bank pointed out recently that

“Emissions trading has done little to encourage investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency . . . according to analysis by Deutsche Bank’s Asset Management (DeAM) division.”

The perfect may well be the enemy of the good, but that doesn’t make what the Australian government is proposing good. The bad remains the bad regardless of what we think of the perfect.

We need to massively reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels and we need to do so quickly. We also need to stop deforestation. Carbon trading allows industry to postpone changes (or simply not carry out any changes at all). Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of waiting for industry to decide that the price of carbon is too high (which it won’t be if forest carbon is included in the carbon markets – if anything forest carbon will flood the market and reduce the price of carbon) before it decides to take any action.

“Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were nearly 40% higher than those in 1990. Even if global emission rates are stabilized at present-day levels, just 20 more years of emissions would give a 25% probability that warming exceeds 2°C, even with zero emissions after 2030. Every year of delayed action increases the chances of exceeding 2°C warming.
[ . . . ]
Several vulnerable elements in the climate system (e.g. continental ice-sheets, Amazon rainforest, West African monsoon and others) could be pushed towards abrupt or irreversible change if warming continues in a business-as-usual way throughout this century.
[ . . . ]
If global warming is to be limited to a maximum of 2 °C above pre-industrial values, global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly.”

This comes from a recently released report, The Copenhagen Diagnosis, 2009: Updating the World on the Latest Climate Science”. Given this situation, why on earth would anyone want to promote a scheme that delays the reduction of emissions from burning fossil fuels? Carbon offsets are not going to prevent runaway climate change.

Here’s how Professor Nicolas Gruber, Professor for Environmental Physics, ETH Zürich, one of the authors of the Copenhagen Diagnosis report puts it: “The climate system does not provide us with a silver bullet. There is no escape but to start reducing greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible.”

Every time the claim is made that Australian industry will not need to reduce their emissions, it is done so assuming these industries will blithely accept carbon costs without trying to reduce their emissions and avoid any kind of penalty. This is, in my opinion, unlikely. All participants in the CPRS will seek to minimise their exposure to a carbon price and will always seek to use efficiency measures where the cost of doing so is less than the carbon emissions cost penalty.

We also have to acknowledge that the reason we need REDD is because these forests are being degraded which does increase global emissions. The first and fundamental criteria for REDD is that the land MUST be under threat and would, if not for REDD, be deforested and/or degraded.

To reiterate a much used phrase – because it is important to do so – perfect is the enemy of good enough. REDD is, today, a good enough start.