Down and dirty: farm soil will offset emissions in Australia's carbon cut scheme

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/down-and-dirty-farm-soil-will-offset-emissions-in-australias-carbon-cut-scheme-20091213-kqhj.html

Down and dirty: farm soil will offset emissions in Australia's carbon cut scheme

GREGG BORSCHMANN IN COPENHAGEN AND GUY PEARSE
December 14, 2009

IT WAS a candid remark in a private briefing. But unfortunately for the Government, comments by an Australian climate negotiator late last week in Copenhagen have pretty much let the cat out of the bag on where Labor intends to find any ambitious cuts to Australia's 2020 greenhouse gas emissions.

Ironically, it will be in exactly the same places that the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, goes looking for his ''practical measures'' to solve climate change.

And they will not be anywhere near the smokestacks of dirty coal-fired power stations or the big polluting industries. They will be in the rolling back paddocks, grazing lands and grasslands of rural Australia - a green pot of carbon gold.

The premise is that simple changes in how we manage agricultural land - reducing tillage and fertiliser use or improving fire management - help return carbon to the soil. It is hard to put a dollar value on the bonanza but the numbers are enough, some say, to make Australia carbon neutral for the next three or four decades - all without having to impose a nasty tax, set up a complicated emissions trading scheme or clean up a single polluting pipe.

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