Australia: Financial Crisis takes toll on Carbon Scheme

From - Independent Online, By Rob Taylor - October 26, 2008

Read Full Article: News - Science: Financial crisis takes toll on carbon scheme

Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd won office promising to be a climate change warrior but his chief weapon - a carbon trade scheme to slash emissions - is falling victim to shifting politics and world financial tumult. A former diplomat, Rudd made ratification of the Kyoto climate pact - opposed by the former conservative government for more than a decade - his first act after winning November elections tinged green by the seeming onrush of climate shift.

"The Rudd government was elected partly on its promises to take strong action, not just symbolic and token gestures, to cut greenhouse gas emissions and in particular to build renewable energy," says carbon trade and environment academic Mark Diesendorf from the University of New South Wales. Even before winning, Rudd commissioned respected climate economist Ross Garnaut to design an emissions scheme to rival in breadth the world's biggest regime already operating in Europe.

Successive surveys showed Australians overwhelmingly wanted a government to fight global warming after climate scientists said the country was experiencing a pace of climate change unmatched elsewhere, bringing droughts, storms and agricultural hardship. Now, after a sharp economic slowdown, bloodletting on world financial markets and unemployment lifting off a three-decade nadir, the government seems to have dropped its sights in line with Australians fast-shifting concern to their jobs.

Related:

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> Rudd's green vote still eroding | The Daily Telegraph
> World | Africa - Ban says global crisis threatens to undo all U.N.'s work - Reuters.com
> AFP: Financial crisis must not slow talks on CO2 emissions: UN