Wait, Koalas Can't Offset Coal and Gas?

If you follow climate policy then you'll have heard of carbon offsets. The idea sounds logical enough. Rather than reducing all of its own emissions, a company can pay for emissions reductions somewhere else and claim those reductions against its own pollution.

Supporters say offsets provide flexibility, lower costs and help with the 'transition' to 'net zero'. And in an ideal world perhaps they might. But the reality is that offsets allow major polluters to keep polluting while claiming environmental credentials.

Now the Albanese Government is taking this concept into dangerous new territory.

Under changes to Australia's carbon market rules, protecting habitat for threatened species like koalas can now generate carbon credits that large polluters can us to offset their own emissions.

Think about what that means. Coal and gas companies can continue expanding fossil fuel production which destroys forests that koalas depend on while claiming carbon credits generated from protecting (at least on paper) the very forests that koalas depend upon!

It is difficult to imagine a clearer example of treating the symptom while ignoring the cause. Climate change is one of the greatest long-term threats facing koalas. Catastrophic bushfires, extreme heatwaves, prolonged droughts, and changing rainfall patterns are already placing enormous pressure on Australia's koalas. And at the same time, native forest logging continues to destroy and fragment the remaining habitat they need to survive.

The science is clear. Koalas need their habitat protected and dangerous climate change addressed. One without the other won't be enough. That's why this policy is so ridiculous.

Protecting koala habitat is absolutely the right thing to do. We should be expanding protected areas, restoring degraded forests and creating the Great Koala National Park. These actions should happen because koalas are an iconic Australian species with intrinsic value, and because healthy forests provide enormous benefits for biodiversity, water, climate resilience and future generations. But protecting koala habitat should never be allowed as an accounting and greenwashing mechanism that supports fossil fuel companies to keep digging up coal and pumping up gas.

You can't solve climate change by continuing to expand the industries driving it while claiming credits for protecting some of its victims. Imagine a bath overflowing onto the floor. Protecting koala habitat is like grabbing a mop. Of course you should grab the mop. But if you don't turn off the tap, the floor keeps flooding. Australia's emissions are the overflowing tap. Forest protection is the mop. We need both. But most importantly, we need to make sure the tap gets turned off fast.

The Australia Institute has rightly pointed out that these forest carbon credits risk becoming another form of greenwashing - allowing coal and gas companies to continue producing emissions while claiming environmental benefits elsewhere. And that deserves serious attention.

The Albanese Government has already approved dozens of new and expanded coal, oil and gas projects since 2022. Each of them locks in decades of additional greenhouse gas emissions at precisely the time climate scientists tell us global emissions must fall rapidly if we're to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Meanwhile, koalas are an increasingly endangered species. The contradiction could hardly be starker. If we're serious about saving koalas, the solution isn't complicated. Protect their habitat. Restore damaged landscapes. End native forest logging and broadscale land clearing. Stop approving new fossil fuel developments that make climate change worse. And reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions in line with the science.

Koalas should never become a licence for more coal and gas. They deserve protection in their own right - not to be used as cover for the pollution that threatens their future.