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Last updated on August 5th, 2017 at 03:19 pm
My farming relatives usually earn a living providing food and such, but they might change their plans after reading this:
Peter Allen, a third-generation farmer from Moura, has signed a $1 million deal for doing nothing at all.
In a historic transaction, mining company Rio Tinto bought the rights to carbon dioxide stored in 3500ha of Mr Allen’s heavily vegetated property, 575km northwest of Brisbane.
Instead of clearing the land to run cattle, Mr Allen will preserve the trees for 120 years to ensure they soak up carbon dioxide.
He’ll also break lifespan records. Hey, maybe I can corner some of this action by growing comment forests.
(Via Art Vandelay)
- What a scam! Pocket the cash. Express surprise and dismay when a “bushfire” unlocks all that carbon again. Plant saplings. Repeat.Posted by CB on 2007 05 26 at 01:59 PM • permalink
- 30-odd years ago, as a youthful Whitlamite conversationista, I planted many “dwarf” native trees on our 1/4-acre block. Now they’re all 5-15m tall and have driven our neighbours spare with leaves in their swimming pools, roots under their paving etc. Do I qualify for a green award and megabucks in carbon credits, or am I a neighbourhood eco-vandal?
In The Kingdom of the Wicked Anthony Burgess described the Zealots in the early years AD as living in ‘impotent disaffection, the only state in which they were really happy.’ You get that vibe from the glowball worming crowd. They clamour, but underneath the noise there’s a real elation.
A character in one of Stephen King’s books experienced a painful epiphany. He realised he’d spent his adult life demanding extreme measures for environmental protection, not because they were necessary but because they were extreme, far too extreme to ever have any chance of being implemented.– SwinishCapitalist
This was posted by Swinish at the tail end of the 1000 post thread. I thought it made a lot of sense so plunked it down here. Didn’t want to see it lost on page 5 of what had become a long spamfest.
- I don’t know, reese, I think the actual server is in New Jersey.Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 05 26 at 03:41 PM • permalink
- Oh folly, folly!Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 05 26 at 04:32 PM • permalink
- I have four trees in my garden.
Pay me your carbon credits or the trees get it!
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 05 26 at 04:33 PM • permalink
- What a fantastic scam! I see he’s been reading the Goracles latest book..
- Hmmmm.
Well I feel like a right idiot.
When I was 17 my cousin got a chance to buy 1,000 acres of forested land in the absolute, and literal, middle of nowhere for cheap.
I thought he was an idiot but the jokes on me.
Posted by memomachine on 2007 05 26 at 10:44 PM • permalink
- I’m thinking about driving *gasp* to the shops later to buy a newspaper *gasp*, however if someone pays me enough money, I wont go.
As the purchaser, you will get a signed carbon indulgence and a warm inner glow knowing that you prevented dangerous carbon being released into the atmosphere. Act now!
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2007 05 26 at 11:31 PM • permalink
- Damn, wish I had this “global warming CO2 crap” excuse when I was a kid trying to get out of mowing the lawn.
And I’m also a bit familiar with these scam payments to farmers; they use them a lot around here to get farmers to NOT farm and instead let the land go back to being a wetland. Hell, it’s the farmer’s risk if he wants to plant in the field he knows will flood every few years; why should I bail him out?? (No pun intended)
Posted by Tex Lovera on 2007 05 27 at 01:12 AM • permalink
- Have been thinking of doing the same thing recently. Buy a couple of hundred acres, sell cabon offsets by planting trees.
Pay off land cost by jacking up the price to $50.00 a tonne of carbon, and planting two dollar trees.
Introduce nice furry animals and other wildlife onto my land and then hire out land on day rate basis, to folks with guns to shoot said furry animals and any other rabid
greeniescritters that get in the way.Win, Win.
Posted by deadparrot on 2007 05 27 at 02:18 AM • permalink
- Peter Allen had a permit to clear a few thousand hectares of Mulga scrub about 800km SW of Brisbane, but hey who cares about the details.
Rio had the carbon value (no. of tons/ha) of the trees assessed and paid him a per ton value.
This is the brave new world of carbon trading. A landholder is paid not to produce food (beef) in exchange for storing “carbon” which may or may not have some deleterious effect on the environment now or in the future.
No taxpayer dollars involved, just Rio shareholders, whom I am sure feel much better now they have saved a patch of scrub.
- If he really we sequestering carbon, he would cut down the trees after their growth rate peaks, plant new trees, and find uses for the cut trees that will keep them from decomposing for the longest period of time possible (like using them for construction or paper [later to be safely buried away in a landfill]).
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