The Wire

The Prime Minister John Howard has today tried to trip up Labor by combining Environmental and Fiscal Policy. Mr Howard says that Labor’s move to back British Economist Nicholas Stern’s proposal to cut Australia’s greenhouse emissions by 30 per cent in 13 years will damage the economy. In a timely, almost trendy fashion, the coalition is purchasing carbon credits in Indonesia by spending 200 million dollars on planting trees. But in Tasmania today, demonstrators stopped loggers from entering old growth forest in the Weld Valley. Adam Burling from the Huon Valley Environment Centre says that whilst the government is buying trees overseas, logging is in fact escalating in parts of Tasmania’s Old Growth forests