ACT Greens MLA for Molonglo, Shane Rattenbury MLA has slammed the Government’s funding of the Arboretum from the climate budget following the tabling of a report* that indicated the emissions that will be saved by the project.

“The Government has indicated that over a period of 200 years, the Arboretum will sequester around 63,000 tonnes of CO₂. Annually this is around 0.00007 percent of the ACT’s emissions each year!” Mr Rattenbury said.

“Yet the Government is spending something like 16 percent of the climate budget on the Arboretum, even before they had any indication of its effectiveness as a climate mitigation measure.”

“Clearly the people are not getting value for money on climate change with the Arboretum.”

“It would be laughable, if it weren’t such a serious issue.” said Mr Rattenbury.

“The people of the ACT expect real action and substantial funding to fix the climate problem. They are tired of being told that Governments are fixing the problems with programs that don’t deliver real emission reductions.”

“This is a climate emergency, not a picnic. We need to turn around spiralling levels of greenhouse emissions and we need to do that quickly.

“The Arboretum may well be a fine tourist attraction and a beautiful place when it’s finished, but the Government must stop pretending that it is playing any significant role in reducing emissions.” Mr Rattenbury said.

*Government Response – 2009-10 Estimates Committee Report, p 19:  “…estimates that the Arboretum will reach a maximum carbon stock of around 70,000 tonnes with 90 percent of this amount sequestered within 200 years.”

Tags: arboretum, climate change

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 2:22 pm and is filed under News, Shane Rattenbury. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.