Australia Will Abandon Emission-Trading Plans

[hatrack]

"The announcement that Australia has abandoned the international greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme of the Kyoto Protocol hammers another nail into the coffin of a legitimate climate change policy in Australia. The emissions trading scheme, which allows industry to offset production of greenhouse gas emissions by investing in projects such as carbon sinks, was designed to minimise the immediate burden of emissions reductions on industry and allow a gradual transition to sustainable industrial practices.

The announcement by the Environment Minister, David Kemp, reads as yet another attempt by the Government to distance itself from the terms of the Kyoto Protocol, and to convince a number of industry groups that the Government remains committed to the central pillar of its climate policy: business as usual.

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Meanwhile, next year European states will begin an emissions trading scheme, and Australian companies look certain to miss an opportunity to take part in a potentially lucrative scheme that would also have provided them with a mechanism to adopt more greenhouse-friendly practices.

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It is interesting to note that many of those countries most vocal on the limitations of Kyoto and its associated mechanisms are those whose role at international negotiations has served to create these limitations. Australia pushed hard to ensure that the greenhouse emissions targets under Kyoto would be limited, but has pointed to the inadequacies of these targets and mechanisms to attain them. In 2002 the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, described the protocol as a "stunt", and not "a serious way of addressing the issue". That a government that had secured an increase in greenhouse emissions targets - and with the highest per capita production of greenhouse gas emissions in the world - could criticise the level of global reductions as inadequate is stunning in its hypocrisy."

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[AbsolutMauser]

1. Emissions trading is not a great solution

I tend to agree that emissions trading is not an effective means of reducing pollution. We have emissions trading between states in the United States. The overall level of emissions in the whole country may be lessened by such a plan, but it allows areas that are already having significant air pollution issues to increase their emissions levels by reducing them someplace where there is no current problem.

We need to be focused on reducing emissions in problem areas, not giving problems areas a break and justifying it with an overall emissions reduction rationale.

~AbM