Greens sceptical over greenhouse delays

SMH


Wendy Frew Environment Reporter
November 15, 2006

ENERGY campaigners and green groups have warned that Federal Government plans to exclude heavy greenhouse gas polluters from any emissions trading schemes could result in higher carbon emissions from Australia.

They expressed disbelief yesterday that the Government - long a critic of emissions trading - was simply delaying taking action again.

A co-ordinator with Climate Action Network Australia, Julie-Anne Richards, said the Australian Government's attempts to propose a "new Kyoto" agreement at climate change negotiations in Nairobi this week put it at risk of being "seen as a world joke".

"There is already a global carbon trading scheme that's in operation right now, and it's within the Kyoto Protocol," Ms Richards said.

"Australia could already be taking advantage of this scheme."

Instead the Government was ducking the issue with proposals that "simply won't address the scale of the problem".

On Monday the Prime Minister, John Howard, appeared to yield to pressure when he told members of the Business Council of Australia that the Government would set up a working group with business to examine a carbon trading scheme.

However, he warned he would not preside over policies that would "rob Australia of its competitive advantage in the industries that are so important to us".

He also said an agreement between Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and the US to develop technology to cut greenhouse pollution, in a group called AP6, could form the basis of a new global compact on climate change. However, AP6 has no targets for cutting emissions, no timetable to deploy so-called clean technologies, no carrots to encourage industry to cut emissions and no stick to penalise them if they fail to do so.

A campaigner with Greenpeace, Danny Kennedy, said the latest announcement seemed to be another government smokescreen.

"Do we really need a hat-trick of energy inquiries before we can move forward on tackling climate change? Mr Howard does not need to reinvent the wheel [on emissions trading]."