By *Susan Austin*

June 26, 2009 – Hobart, Tasmania -- Along with over 400 other people, I
turned up to the Wrest Point Casino here to attend the premiere of /The
Burning Season/ on June 1. I had the film’s headline -- “As inspiring as
/The Inconvenient Truth/ was frightening” in the back of my mind, hoping
for a good news story. Instead I sat through a well-orchestrated promo
for a carbon trading company, set up by a young Australian-based
millionaire whose message was that it is possible to make money and save
the environment at the same time.

By setting up a carbon trading company called Carbon Conservation, and
brokering high-level deals between big banks and provincial Indonesian
governors, the film’s “star”, young entrepreneur Dorjee Sun, was able to
secure the protection of large areas of forests that may otherwise have
been logged or burnt.

The plight of orangutans that are dying through loss of habitat was a
heart-string pulling sideline. The audience was invited to join in the
panel discussion at the end with a request for positive comments and an
appeal to go beyond the standard, divisive “two-sided forestry debate”.
We were implored to see that greenies and woodchippers could find a
win-win solution in Tasmania, if only we embraced the innovative new
world of carbon trading.

Full article at http://links.org.au/node/1129

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