CANBERRA—The Federal Government is being attacked from all sides on climate change—the Greens want tougher action, while the Liberals have called for emissions trading to be postponed.
While Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is in Japan talking with world leaders about climate change, the debate is hotting up back home.
The Government plans to start emissions trading in 2010 but the other parties aren't happy.
The Greens, who now share the balance of power in the Senate, have threatened to use parliament to change the emissions trading scheme if it is not ambitious enough.
Greens leader Bob Brown expressed fears the Rudd Government's actions on climate change would prove "too tentative and ineffective".
He wants carbon emissions slashed by 40 per cent by 2020, and for emissions to start to fall in seven years' time. The Government has not set such tough targets.
"If the Rudd Government falls short of these targets we will move, the Greens will move, to amend the legislation when it enters the Senate," Senator Brown said.
But Liberal leader Brendan Nelson is taking a very different tack - he thinks the dangers of climate change are being exaggerated, and wants emissions trading delayed.
"There is no question that Mr Rudd should responsibly start to think through his own policies and postpone his implementation date of 2010," Dr Nelson said.
"Even if you accept the Armageddon scenarios of (climate change adviser) Professor Garnaut and others of plague, pestilence, disease, drought ... it is the emissions from the major emitters around the world that will be producing that, whereas Australia is only 1.4 per cent of global emissions."
The Liberals are still not singing from the same song-sheet on emissions trading.
Dr Nelson thinks Australia should start emissions trading no earlier than 2012, and only if other countries make commitments on climate change.
But opposition treasury spokesman Malcolm Turnbull said the Liberals remained committed to their policy on emissions trading, which is that a scheme should start in 2012.
Meanwhile, the CSIRO says it has achieved a major breakthrough in tackling climate change, by capturing carbon dioxide emissions from power station flues.
Trapping and burying carbon dioxide emissions from power stations is seen by some as a major way to tackle climate change in Australia.
The landmark was achieved at the post-combustion-capture (PCC) pilot plant at Loy Yang Power Station in Victoria's Latrobe Valley.
CSIRO energy technology chief Dr David Brockway said it was the first time carbon dioxide had been captured using this technology at any power station in the southern hemisphere.
But there are warnings that taking steps to cut emissions will put people out of work.
ExxonMobil, one of the country's largest oil refiners, told News Ltd it would struggle to keep its Melbourne refinery open because of extra costs under emissions trading.
The refinery employs 350 people.
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