In 2011, two Australian environmentalist millionaires, Wotif.com co-founder Graeme Wood and Kathmandu clothing brand founder Jan Cameron, bought themselves what was then the world’s largest woodchip mill and infuriated both the state government and local forestry industry by closing it down.

Wood was unapologetic.

“I think it is time to move on. I’m interested in the future, I’m interested in economic development [and] Tasmania needs it badly,” he told the ABC at the time. “I see this as the most effective way of achieving that.”

What he might not have known was that their decision to shutter the Triabunna Mill brought about a “profound and unheard of miracle”, one of Australia’s most acclaimed scientists told the Herald and The Age yesterday.

Loading

According to a scientific paper published this week in the journal Environmental Research Letters by Griffith University’s Professor Brendan Mackey and Lindenmeyer, the closure of Triabunna meant that in the years that followed Tasmania was one of the first jurisdictions in the world to become not just net zero, but carbon negative.

Unlike mainland Australia, Tasmania relies mostly on hydroelectric power. As a result, Mackey explained, the state’s main cause of greenhouse gas emissions was logging in native forests. When old-growth forests were logged, massive amounts of carbon were released into the atmosphere.

These must be accounted for in greenhouse gas emissions inventories. But jurisdictions may also remove from the inventory the amount of carbon being stored in undisturbed state forests. The rules governing this accounting are complicated and arcane, Mackey said.