Oz Businesses Urged To Join Double Secret Probation Climate Pact

[hatrack]

THE nation's peak business lobby - long divided over the Kyoto protocol on climate change - has been told to fall in behind the new Asia-Pacific partnership on greenhouse gas emissions signed last week. Gerry Hueston, Australasian president of oil group BP and a senior member of the Business Council of Australia, has called on fellow council members to adopt individual plans to cut greenhouse gases.

Mr Hueston said yesterday it was time for business to rally around a new settlement on climate change, to deliver real results and enable the policy framework to evolve and ultimately succeed. (Emphasis added to highlight absurdity of rhetoric in the face of the failure of every voluntary program devised to date to produce any net reduction in GHG outputs at the national level).

He said companies in Australia might have to go beyond voluntary measures and accept a carbon credit trading scheme to reduce greenhouse pollution. Australia last week signed the new Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate, which aims to use new technology to limit emissions instead of adhering to the Kyoto Protocol's firm targets for greenhouse gas reductions.

EDIT

The Hueston proposal involves the BCA adopting a four-point position on climate change: recognising the need for action against scientifically proven climate change; supporting a goal of "stabilising global greenhouse gas emissions at today's levels by 2050"; using a "broad-based approach" to achieve this goal; and supporting international action with "Australia leading the debate through diplomacy abroad and example at home". (Emphasis added to remind everybody that even parties to Kyoto don't look likely to hit their targets, which were set 13 years ago, even with 7 more years left to make cuts)

"I can't see how anyone in the business community, setting aside sectional vested interests, can possibly argue against it," he told a breakfast in Perth.

EDIT

Well, if that's what you believe, Gerry old bean, you're in for an education!

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16144355%255E30417,00.html

[phantom power]

1. It's going to be a different world in 2050.

If I'm still around, I'll be telling stories to my grandkids about what it was like before our planet went haywire.

They'll humor me, but they won't believe me.

[wli]

2. not a whole lot of discussion of Peak Oil in this context

That will probably derail most of the plans.