This is an excerpt from an article by scientists David Lindenmayer, Brendan Mackey & Heather Keith which appeared in the Canberra Times, Oct 14 2022
Read the full article here. We're sharing this article to build our community's knowledge of the climate and economic impacts of native forest logging, as we campaign to protect the Tallarook Forest from logging:
"While there are many sources of emissions, it is only native forests that can remove carbon from the atmosphere at the scale and time required. Protecting and restoring native forests is a critical mitigation action if Australia is to meet its net zero emissions targets within the critical one to three decades.
The government has legislated a 43 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030 below the 2005 level. To meet this new target, Australia will need to reduce carbon emissions by around 15.3 megatons (MT) each year over the next nine years.
This is about the same annual carbon emissions caused by logging our native forest.
Each year around two per cent of our native forests are logged, resulting in 15 MT Co2. The other 98 per cent of native forest is left standing and continue to grow - providing an incredibly powerful offset against carbon emissions. If we were to stop logging native forests, the avoided emissions alone are close to what is needed annually (15.5 Mt CO2) to achieve our 43 per cent reduction by 2030 target.
Indeed, such is the power of native forests and other ecosystems in the national GHG accounts, that their removal not only offsets logging emissions but also about 14 per cent of our fossil fuel emissions.
Full protection of native forests - by this we mean a rapid exit from native forest logging - is therefore a critical mitigation action." The article continues - read the full piece here
