Same old scam: offsets permit polluters to pay their way out of climate action

The declaration that shaped the TAFF conference was explicit under the heading “No false solutions“: carbon offsets, carbon capture and storage, ammonia co-firing and gas as a transition fuel were all named as ways of prolonging fossil fuel dependence, and of diverting public money away from the decentralised, community-based renewable systems that actually cut emissions and deliver real economic opportunity. That process continues in April 2027, when Tuvalu hosts the second conference, co-convened with Ireland. Pacific nations are demonstrating global leadership on climate action and setting the agenda for where this goes next.

Which brings us back to Australia and our domestic climate policy. Submissions on the Safeguard Mechanism close on 18 September.

If you’ve never heard of it, you’re not alone, and that’s part of the problem. This is meant to be the policy that makes our biggest emitters cut emissions. Instead, it lets them buy their way out with unlimited carbon offsets. It was dreamed up by the Abbott government in 2016, and every government since has had a chance to get rid of it and put a functional tax on carbon – a carbon price. Every government since has instead reached for the gaffer tape, continued to approve new fossil fuel projects and allow unlimited dodgy offsets for polluters.

There is potentially more carbon offset opportunities on the horizon for our biggest polluters.

A new ACCU method put forward by the ALP NSW government was approved in June. It lets state governments earn credits by putting a logging moratorium on public native forests for up to 100 years (not permanent protection), and it’s been promoted as something to help fund NSW’s Great Koala National Park.

That park was promised unconditionally back in 2015, so the “abatement” it generates isn’t new, and these forests have stood for a millennium, so that carbon was already being absorbed – and released as forests do. Worse, the method only requires the forest to stay standing for 100 years, while the fossil fuel-based carbon dioxide it’s meant to offset stays in the atmosphere for thousands. If this is allowed to pass through the federal parliament, there will be a fresh supply of offsets for polluters to increase their offset based cooking of the books.

This is exactly the accounting trick Pacific nations have been warning us about, and that the TAFF process, of which Australia is a signatory, agreed to reject.

The Safeguard Mechanism review is an opportunity to change course: to cap offset use, end offsets to coal, oil and gas extraction, to require real abatement at the source, and not allow native forests to be used as a commodity and convenient new pollution permit factory.

Louise Morris 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.