KEVIN Rudd’s bid to get his emissions trading scheme through parliament this year could be frustrated after the Greens and the Senate independents said they would consider a Coalition option to delay a vote on the laws until after crucial global talks in Copenhagen in December.
The Coalition, which could finalise its position at a partyroom meeting on Tuesday, is considering agreeing with the Government on the emission reduction targets Australia could sign up to under a new international deal, while delaying legislation setting up the domestic emissions trading scheme, which is now not scheduled to start until mid-2011.
Opposition emissions trading spokesman Andrew Robb said yesterday: “It would be irresponsible to rush this deeply flawed scheme through parliament by the end of June. We can have the debate after the Copenhagen meeting at the end of the year, with all the information on the table, without affecting Mr Rudd’s new start date.”
admin /23 May, 2009
May 21, 2009 — Sometimes you have to hand it to capitalism. It’s sheer magic the way the system takes promising concepts, steeps them in the transformative power of the market – and turns them into howling social and environmental disasters.
Take biofuels, for example. With fossil fuels warming the planet, why not, indeed, take advantage of the fact that plants use carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to produce sugars and oils that can be turned into substitutes for petrol and diesel?
We all know where that finished up. A big chunk of the US corn crop was distilled into grain ethanol. Corn prices soared on the extra demand, increasing costs for a broad range of food production. Anyone unable to pay went hungry. When US drivers filled up with bio-ethanol, they were in effect burning the tortillas of the Mexican poor.
But is the technology the problem? Or the system?
