Wong has a difficult task. At Poznan she faces the blowtorch of international politics and an agenda in which the developed nation Australia is expected to be an ethical global exemplar of greenhouse gas reduction. Meanwhile, back in Canberra, a parliamentary subcommittee of 10 ministers has been negotiating the equally daunting domestic politics of a target range for Australia's Emissions trading scheme. The final design will be issued in a white paper on December 15.

The introduction of the emissions trading scheme in Australia is still scheduled for 2010. This is ahead of most of the rest of the world and is based on the naive assumption that major global emitters such as China, the United States and India will simply fall in line once Australia and a few other countries act. And because Australia's emissions scheme is essentially planned to subsidise an inefficient populist, risky and politically correct energy policy based on ''clean coal'' and ''renewables'' its cost burden on industrial and domestic energy consumers will be heavy.

Signing up to new post-Kyoto emission reduction targets during a global financial crisis will be one of the great challenges for the 192 countries represented at Poznan. No country has to make formal binding commitments until the last round of talks in Copenhagen in December 2009. However, the United Nations would like to see developed countries cut their emissions by 25 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. Without a credible energy policy in place Australia will continue to be daunted by such a target range. By contrast, a nuclear-powered European Union is already laughing all the way to the global carbon bank.

Indeed nuclear power has the pivotal role in any battle against climate change. The Poznan delegates have already had some reassurance from the world's No2 polluter, the US. President-elect Barack Obama has set a target of reducing US greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and then reducing them by a further 80 per cent by 2050 with nuclear energy playing the major role.

In the US there are now 25 applications for new nuclear power stations to add to the existing 104 which have been brought on-line over the past 50 years.

Professor Ross Garnaut's final report issued at the end of September 2008 concedes that, in Australia, nuclear power could supply more than a quarter of Australia's electricity needs by 2050 if a proposed policy based on ''clean coal'' and ''renewables'' fails. But he questions the technology on economic grounds and restates his earlier convictions that Australia is ''not the logical first home of a new nuclear capacity.'' This is one of the many areas in which he and the Rudd Government are completely at odds with expert world opinion. The prevailing global view is that of all countries, Australia has the most to gain from domestic nuclear power and a nuclear industry to serve the world. Australians should consider the remarkable performance of nuclear power in the US in 2007. In that year America's 104 nuclear power stations established a high average capacity factor of 91.8 per cent and produced a massive 807billion kilowatt hours of energy at a record low cost of 1.68c per kilowatt hour. Is it any wonder that there are now applications and planning procedures for some 25additional nuclear power stations in the US? In Australia, ''generation four'' nuclear power stations built over the next four decades would, likewise, deliver the lowest-cost, reliable and emission-free energy.

Earlier this year, in Barcelona, the EU's electricity industry executives held a major conference on the ''De-Carbonising Europe Trading Scheme''. Of the delegates, 49 per cent chose nuclear power as the key technology to lower carbon emissions, 24 per cent chose Carbon Capture and Sequestration and 6 per cent chose ''renewables''. And the CCS advocates recognised that this technology still does not exist and must not be mandated for new or existing plant. For energy security and lowest-cost emission trading the Rudd Government should follow the European example.

If the Australian Government really wants to demonstrate to the UN that Australia is a world leader in greenhouse gas abatement it has one clear responsibility. It needs to commend and endorse nuclear power technology as a pivotal component of an Australian energy policy. Without such a commitment even the modest Garnaut target of 10per cent reduction by 2020 will be difficult to achieve and energy price escalation will hurt both domestic and industrial users and commit Australia to decades of economic, environmental and geopolitical disadvantage.

Leslie Kemeny is the Australian foundation member of the International Nuclear Energy Academy. He is a visiting professorial research fellow and consulting nuclear scientist and engineer.