Filed under: Politics | Tags: Australian Forestation, Coen Brothers Clean Coal TV Spot, Reality Coalition, Turnbull Climate Policy
It seems that ole Turny-Turnstile just can’t catch a break.
Like much of the coal and oil industry, Turnbull’s attempt to greenwash himself into someone more like the Honorable Senator Brown appears to be failing.
While initially sounding promising, Turnbull’s proposal to plant 9 million hectares of forest throughout Australia and thus conserve and trap up to 146 million tonnes of CO2 has now been shown to be a furphy.
In full-colour glory the Agriculture Minister Tony Burke demonstrated how, to achieve Turnbull’s stated aims of planting 9 million trees, Australia would essentially have to give up on farming.
Annabel Crabb delivers a particularly cutting analysis of this little interchange.
Turnbull’s forests, the minister explained, would have to be planted all over Queensland’s canefields, and all the way down the east coast. Agricultural land around Tamworth and Glen Innes would not be immune, nor Queensland’s humble Nambour, birthplace of our own Prime Minister.
Score One, Tony Burke.
If that weren’t bad enough, it appears that the sheen on the concept of ‘Clean Coal’ is appearing to be wearing a little thin. Perhaps it need another coat of greenwash?
The latest critics of said non-dirty coal are Academy Award-winning directors Joel and Ethan Coen, who have created a 30 second TV spot for the Reality Coalition debunking the myth of clean coal.
Clean coal has many critics … most of them very learned people like scientists and energy experts who continuously point out that simply because we call it clean don’t make it so. But when academy-award winning directors jump on board the bandwagon, you know the entertainment industry is pulling out all the stops. Sean Penn was clearly not enough.
What does this mean? Soon we might see the evaporation of Turnbull’s other prong in his plan: the construction of two commercial scale (read: at least 500mgw) clean coal plants. That would reduce Turnbull’s plan to nothingness.
Score Two: Coen Brothers
It’s lucky there aren’t too many Turnbull’s trying to greenwash themselves Brown, as it is there is an awful lot of hot air up there already.
