Australia’s biggest polluters, including coal and gas companies, are being allowed to keep expanding and keep winning new approvals. The trick is so-called carbon offsets.

Under the Safeguard Mechanism, fossil fuel facilities can meet their obligations by buying carbon credits to use as offsets instead of cutting pollution. Many of those credits are dodgy. They are generated by paying for things like not logging native forests that were never going to be logged, and they don’t deliver the real, additional, and permanent emissions reductions that are claimed. The result is a climate policy that safeguards the fossil fuel industry, not the climate.

Join us in Hobart for a conversation about how dodgy offsets are being used to wave through new coal and gas projects, why native forests are being turned into a licence to pollute, and what it would take to end the offsets loophole and get on with phasing out fossil fuels.

The discussion will explore how the Safeguard Mechanism and the Improved Native Forest Management (INFM) carbon offset method let the nations biggest polluters substitute paper credits for real abatement, and what that means for forests, for communities and for Australia’s credibility as it prepares to lead international climate negotiations. It will also look at what a genuine transition away from fossil fuels, with no new coal and gas and no offsets loophole, would look like.

SPEAKERS:

Senator Nick McKim — Greens Senator for Lutruwita/Tasmania

Senator Nick McKim is an Australian Greens Senator for Tasmania and the party's spokesperson for Economic Justice and Treasury, Forests, and LGBTIQA+.  A former Leader of the Tasmanian Greens and Australia's first ever Greens Minister, Nick has served in the Senate since 2015. He has spent his political career taking on corporate power, fighting inequality, and challenging the political establishment.

Christine Milne AO  — Patron, Bob Brown Foundation

Christine Milne AO serves as a prominent Patron and Board Member of the Bob Brown Foundation. Her achievements include key roles in creating New Caledonia’s coral reef World Heritage Area as well as the 600,000 hectares expansion of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area in 1989 and was the most knowledgeable federal exponent of a carbon trading scheme."

Alice Hardinge — Campaign Manager, Wilderness Society Tasmania

Alice Hardinge is an environmental campaigner with over ten years of experience in grassroots and professional environmental advocacy. With a background ranging from front-line direct action in threatened forests, to directing strategic litigation, to political and corporate lobbying, Alice is passionate about using a variety of tactics and working with communities to achieve environmental and First Nations justice. As well as working as the Tasmanian Campaigns Manager for the Wilderness Society, Alice volunteers on the executive of Lawyers for Forests and the ACF Council. 

Louise Morris — Head of Fossil Fuel Transition, The Australia Institute 

Louise Morris is the Head of Fossil Fuel Transition at The Australia Institute. Louise is an award-winning advocate with 20 years’ experience encompassing climate, energy, forest protection, and law reform in the not-for-profit sector, and federal politics before joining The Australia Institute.