Asia-Pacific News
Australia's Howard rejects carbon emissions targets
Apr 23, 2007, 6:39 GMT
Sydney - Australia will not take its cue from European countries and set targets for cutting the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, Prime Minister John Howard said Monday.
'I will not sub-contract our climate change policy to the European Union,' Howard said. 'It's technological progress funded by economic growth that holds the key to environmental progress.'
Howard's conservative coalition trails the opposition Labor Party in the opinion polls with just six months to go before a general election. Labor has promised to reverse Howard's decision and sign the Kyoto Protocol that currently commits 35 industrialized countries to legally binding targets for reducing emissions.
The only other Kyoto recalcitrant is the United States, the world's leading emitter. Like Australia, it says poorer countries like China and India should be obliged to cut emissions too.
Despite pumping out more greenhouse gases per capita than any other country, Howard declared Australia's role in combating climate change was insignificant.
'Australia emits fewer greenhouse gases in a year than the United States and China emit in a month,' he said. 'As the Productivity Council has warned, there are potentially very serious costs to Australia from acting alone.'
Australia is the world's biggest coal exporter and relies on the burning of coal, a major source of greenhouse gases, for over 80 per cent of electricity generation.
Howard said earlier this month he would help prepare the country for the symptoms of climate change - warmer weather, less rainfall and rising sea levels - but said there was no urgency in addressing the cause.
He has denied any direct link between the worst drought on record and climate change and has decried Labor's 'zealotry' on curbing emissions. Labor has set a target of 60 per cent lower emissions by 2050.
'Do we need to lower carbon emissions over time? Of course we do,' Howard told a gathering in Brisbane. 'But to say that climate change is the overwhelming moral challenge for this generation of Australians is misguided at best and misleading at worst.'
Howard has promised coal miners secure employment and pledged money for as-yet untried technologies that would reduce pollution from burning coal.
Labor has also promised that coal will remain the mainstay of power generation in Australia. It also says that technologies that would result in 'clean coal' are just around the corner.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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Older Talkback
page: 1
No need to worry what this ridiculous small minded economic rationalist Howard thinks - he's not going to be around much longer come the elections. Then Australia may be able to go forward at last. Rusty.
Allover the world climate change is allready taking its toll as drought is creating problems for the farmers .The weather we are experiencing right now is exceptional even in europe .Temperatures are 10 degrees above normal since more than two weeks on a row and no rain has fallen,farmers are desperately looking for eventual clouds .Same situation in parts of Australia .Freak weather in the USA .No doubt except to a few ignorant people these are the first effects of depleting the fossilized carbon reserves and injecting it in the atmosphere for more than hunderd years now in massive quantities .All this has been predicted now for allmost twenty years by som,recognized by the overwhelming majority of the scientific community .Yet political administration in some countries are wiping the needs of its population from the table,catering only for the financial interest of big industry .As long as these can profit from the energy craze no solution will be examined .Yet we know that every delay to address this urgent matter will multiply costs tenfold and the consequences will still be more dramatic .In the media in the USA the disaster is downplayed by the very people which are supposted to be in control of things ,the only directive issued to the scientists working for the administration is to keep their mouths shut .
That is the policy adopted by a country which with 8 precent of the earth's population emits no less than 25 percent of carbon .
The people are unaware and your president doesn't care .
page: 1
tonny from belgiumApr 23rd, 2007 - 07:21:21
Allover the world climate change is allready taking its toll as drought is creating problems for the farmers .The weather we are experiencing right now is exceptional even in europe .Temperatures are 10 degrees above normal since more than two weeks on a row and no rain has fallen,farmers are desperately looking for eventual clouds .Same situation in parts of Australia .Freak weather in the USA .No doubt except to a few ignorant people these are the first effects of depleting the fossilized carbon reserves and injecting it in the atmosphere for more than hunderd years now in massive quantities .All this has been predicted now for allmost twenty years by som,recognized by the overwhelming majority of the scientific community .Yet political administration in some countries are wiping the needs of its population from the table,catering only for the financial interest of big industry .As long as these can profit from the energy craze no solution will be examined .Yet we know that every delay to address this urgent matter will multiply costs tenfold and the consequences will still be more dramatic .In the media in the USA the disaster is downplayed by the very people which are supposted to be in control of things ,the only directive issued to the scientists working for the administration is to keep their mouths shut .
That is the policy adopted by a country which with 8 precent of the earth's population emits no less than 25 percent of carbon emission .
The people are unaware and your president doesn't care .
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