Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says the Government's emissions trading scheme is being delayed until 2011.
The Government has also cut the price of carbon from $40 to $10 for the first year of the scheme and has increased the range of its emissions reduction target to up to 25 per cent of 2000 levels by 2020, if an international agreement is made later this year in Denmark to keep global emissions under 450 parts per million (ppm).
The Southern Cross Climate Coalition a national group that includes the Australian Conservation Foundation, ACTU, the World Wildlife Fund and Australian Council of Social Service has called for unions, environment and social welfare groups to support the scheme.
But it warned extra investment in renewable energy technologies like solar thermal, and extra incentives for retrofitting commercial buildings were important next steps.
ACTU president Sharan Burrow said Australia would be ''behind the eight ball in the global race for climate-friendly jobs and industries'' if the scheme was not supported.
"The reforms announced today will provide the certainty needed for industry to begin investing in renewable energy and solutions to climate change so that Australia can create up to 1 million climate-friendly and green jobs over the next two decades..
"This proposal acknowledges the harsh economic realities facing the nation and the necessity to carefully assist exposed industries during the transition so that jobs are protected.
"It also establishes a more ambitious longer term target that can be achieved by substantial investment in renewable energy, efficiencies in households, businesses and industries, and new technology such as carbon capture and storage.
"It is time for all sections of the community to move forward with real action on climate change. The looming environmental catastrophe from doing nothing is too serious for further squabbling."
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For an alternative view:
By *David Spratt *
May 5, 2009 -- Kevin Rudd's announced changes to the proposed Carbon
Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) has again split the climate movement,
and this time it's very serious, with three large, rusted-on-to-Labor
[Party] groups running cover for an appalling policy that won't
guarantee a reduction in Australian emissions for decades.
The grassroots movement which gathered in Canberra in January 2009, with
500 people and 150 groups, for the first national Climate Action Summit
and unanimously opposed the CPRS legislation, appears uniformly angry.
Sixty-six climate action groups have written to the Prime Minister Kevin
Rudd saying that: “We believe that you have abandoned your duty of care
to protect the Australian people as well as our species and habitats
from dangerous climate change.”
Full article at http://links.org.au/node/1035
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