http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/new-climate-in-australia/443019/
Better late than never. Australia, the world's biggest per capita polluter, and yet a hesitant signatory to the Kyoto protocol on climate change, has now mooted a domestic carbon pricing regime that can put the country on the track to clean development. Its top 500 environment-polluting industries will have to pay a carbon tax from July next year which, three years later, will be replaced by a market-based emission trading system on the lines of the European Union's internal emission trading scheme. Part of the revenue generated from the carbon levy will be used to help businesses and industries adapt to the new system and switch to cleaner forms of energy. Though the new plan is laudable, it remains to be seen how it will be implemented. Apart from the lack of a political consensus on the move, and opposition from some key industry groups, the country's dismal record in combating global warming does not inspire much confidence. It is worth recalling that Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's own Labour Party had opposed the carbon tax in its election manifesto. She is forced to go in for it now, largely owing to post-election compulsions of running a minority government with support from independents and, more significantly, the Greens party that had made climate plan a precondition for its support.
Australia, along with the US, had refused to accept the Kyoto accord in 2002. Though it ratified it later in 2008, it settled for an extremely soft emission target of limiting greenhouse gas emissions in the 2008-12 period to 108 per cent of 1990 levels. This essentially meant the country could legitimately raise, instead of cutting down, its total emission load by eight per cent. Australia is the most vulnerable country to the adverse impacts of climate change. Apart from being the world's driest inhabited continent, the bulk of its land mass is highly prone to droughts and extreme heat. Climate change is making itself felt in Australia with the gradual rise of average surface temperature since 1910. Business as usual will mean another 1°C rise by 2030 which will, in turn, lead to an increase in the frequency of droughts and extreme heat events. It is, therefore, good that Australia has come up with a climate plan that is in tune with the global trend of greater reliance on domestic initiatives to combat global warming; all the more so since there is no sign of any agreement on a binding and target-based successor to the Kyoto protocol, which expires next year. Even developing countries, including the ones developing fast like India and China which were not obliged to take on emission cuts under Kyoto, have now set their own internal targets for emission control. Australia, with its per head emissions being nearly 17 times that of India and four and a half times that of China, needs to do much more on this front.
