Australia must match the US by going to the Copenhagen conference in December with a position on greenhouse gas emissions abatement that is legislated by the Parliament and not merely supported by the Government. The internally-divided Coalition is simply seeking to save its own skin at the cost of dangerous climate change.
Hence, the only hope of Senate approval may lie with the Greens and Independents. The Rudd Government's ''conditional'' target is now tightened to 25 per cent reduction by 2020. Unfortunately, as to its equally important'''unconditional'' reduction target, it has so far failed to move on from a 5 per cent reduction by 2020 relative to 2005 levels.
But this target is now obsolete given US policy developments, where a 17per cent reduction is now accepted by the House of Representatives, implemented around a tradeable emissions permits scheme.
The way is open for a major step forward, especially if implemented by OECD countries at Copenhagen, leaving China and other non-OECD states to begin serious action. The Greens have fancifully painted the Rudd Government's position as ''worse than nothing'', but unless these two parties come to reasonable terms before Copenhagen they will both be ''part of the problem and not part of the solution''.
Barry Naughten, Farrer
Global warming
I think it's funny that anyone would think that ''climate change deniers'' (whatever that means) need evidence for their lack of belief in something.
I don't believe that there are fairies in my garden, and I expect anyone who believes there are to prove it.
I also think it's funny that global warming alarmists now want to disown the year that they once gleefully proclaimed was the hottest year of the hottest decade of the hottest century in 1000 years 1998. Apparently global warming alarmists can have their cake and eat it too a hot year at the tail end of an upward trend is proof of global warming, until it becomes the start of a downward trend, when it becomes just an anomaly.
D. Zivkovic, Aranda
Policies for our kids
Erwin Jackson proposes some sensible solutions for the mitigation of climate change by Australia, which is the world's greatest per capita greenhouse gas polluter (''PM needs to put more energy into climate change'', June 17, p11).
Rapid development of our world class clean renewable energy technologies is in the forefront of Jackson's proposals. Two vitally important but politically sensitive issues are not included in Jackson's article.
First is population growth, which is a major driver of climate change.
Australia's growth rate is 1.6per cent a year, projecting population doubling in 43 years for the world's most arid continent, whose resources will be increasingly eroded by climate change.
The second omission is the need to promote biosequestration of carbon by soils and vegetation, which has been steadily undermined by industrial agriculture and forestry practices. Recent ANU research shows that Victorian native forests have four times the per hectare carbon storage capacity as tropical rainforests, yet we continue to destroy them and their associated biodiversity for woodchips.
Cessation of forest clearing and establishment of organic farming/horticultural practices could reduce our carbon emissions by 30per cent.
Present policies, driven by heavy industries and developers, are leading towards climate disruption. If our Government were interested in a sustainable future for our descendants, it would establish a policy of population stability and a new industrial/agricultural revolution, with great employment, economic and increased rainfall potential.
Bryan Furnass (member, Strategic Council, the Climate Institute a personal viewpoint), Hughes
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