Antinuclear

The federal emissions reduction minister has defended Australia’s land management practices after a new United Nations climate change report called for changes in the way the world produces and consumes food.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned efforts to limit global warming while feeding a booming population could be wrecked without swift and sweeping changes to how we use the land we live off.

The report on land use and climate change highlighted the need to protect remaining tropical forests as a bulkhead against future warming.  It offered a sobering take on the hope that reforestation and bio-fuel schemes alone can offset mankind’s environmental damage, underlining that reducing emissions will be central to averting disaster.

“Land is a source of emissions as well as a sink,” IPCC chair Hoesung Lee told AFP.

“Obviously you want to reduce emissions from land as much as possible. But that has a lot to do with what’s happening to the other side of the equation: greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from the energy sector.”

But Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor said Australia is already absorbing emissions from land management. “This is a very, very important success story in Australia. Farmers, in particular, haven’t been given the credit they deserve for the role, the enormous role, they’ve played on this front,” he told ABC News on Friday.

But the minister brushed off concerns about the role meat-heavy diets play in climate change, suggesting the report was “forcing” people to become vegan……..

Land is intimately linked to climate. With its forests, plants, and soil it sucks up and stores around one-third of all man-made emissions.  Intensive exploitation of these resources also produces huge amounts of planet-warming CO2, methane and nitrous oxide, while agriculture guzzles up 70 percent of Earth’s freshwater supply.

National Farmers Federation president Fiona Simson said the food warning should send “a shiver down your spine”…….

As the global population balloons towards 10 billion by mid-century, how land is managed by governments, industry and farmers will play a key role in limiting or accelerating the worst excesses of climate change.

Farmers for Climate Action want the federal government to implement a national strategy on climate change and agriculture, and to speed up the transition to clean energy.

“With NSW marking one year since it was 100 per cent drought-declared … and farmers across the country hurting from droughts, heatwaves and other extreme weather events, it is clear that climate change is already hurting Australian agriculture,” the group said in a statement……https://www.sbs.com.au/news/australian-government-brushes-off-un-s-urgent-climate-warning