Government tries to hide massive deforestation in latest climate report

The Government’s greenhouse gas inventory, released today, shows that in the last recorded year of 2013, twice the area of land was deforested as opposed to planted with new trees.

This is in contrast to the Government’s misleading comments about the report where they have used selective information to paint a rosy picture of the their shocking climate change record.

“Trees were cut down on twice the amount of land than they were planted on in 2013,” Green Party co-leader Dr Russel Norman said today

“The key driver of this is the low carbon price, which is largely a result of the Government weakening the emissions trading scheme.

“This Government’s failure to make afforestation viable is resulting in a chainsaw catastrophe.

“Not only does deforestation release a large amount of carbon into the atmosphere, this deforested land is then largely being used to create yet more greenhouse gas emissions, mostly as pasture for cattle.

“Despite the Government trumpeting a slight gross emissions decrease in 2013, net emissions have flatlined in the last recorded year and increased significantly since the National Government came into power.

“The devil is in the detail. The report states that this slight decrease in gross emissions is actually mainly due to the low hydro levels in 2012 which led to temporary unusually high non-renewable use. The ‘decrease’ in emissions the Government refers to is largely due to normal levels of renewable use resuming.

“The Government continues to use misleading figures to hide the fact that their policies are dramatically increasing our emissions.

“The Government needs to start taking climate change seriously and taking action to reduce our emissions and create a fairer, greener economy,” said Dr Norman.

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