Why won’t anyone stand up?
Kenneth Davidson writes in today’s Age:
The Rudd Government’s carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) is a thoroughly compromised version of an emissions trading scheme (ETS). It deserves to be rejected in the Senate even if it requires an unholy alliance between the Greens and the climate change deniers in the Coalition parties.
I honestly have no idea what I would do if I were currently sitting in the Senate chambers (for any party).
There is no doubt that Davidson is right – the CPRS is a joke – and to add weight to that, he quotes extensively from a report by Friends of the Earth who always do a fantastic job. So is it better to have a bad mechanism in place or no mechanism at all?
But if this is the best we can do in Australia, I can only assume that other countries are going through the same sorts of debates and, thanks to the structures that our global economy is built on, it is little wonder that there just isn’t the political will to get an effective Emissions Trading Scheme (in terms of genuine reductions in carbon emissions) of any form up.
The coalition are concerned that if Australia were to get on with the business of building a post-carbon economy that no one else would follow suite and we would lose any competitive advantages we may already have. Of course the flip side of that argument is that it would position us ahead of the pack so that when everyone did start to catch up we would be in a highly advantageous position.
So in the lead up to Copenhagen, I’m astonished that not one country can really stand up an say, “We have already reduced our carbon emissions to 20% below 1990 levels and are on track to be carbon neutral but 2020″. A lot of countries are doing a lot more than Australia, but no one can really stand up and say “we’ve done it”.
Why?
