Will John Howard hear?
The leaders of all of Australia’s 6 states and 2 self-governing territories have signed an open letter to the Australian Prime Minister John Howard, calling on him to enact a carbon emissions trading scheme. In addition, 75 professors of economics have called on his government to ratify the Kyoto Treaty. With so many prominent and clever people saying “DO IT”, what is stopping Howard from acting?
“All eight Labor premiers and chief ministers signed the open letter to Mr Howard ahead of his emissions trading task force reporting on Thursday.
They reminded the prime minister their governments had already committed to a national emissions trading scheme by 2010.
. . .
Meanwhile, 75 professors of economics today called on the federal government to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
Australia and the United States are the only developed nations not to have signed the environmental blueprint.
The economists signed a statement saying Australia would suffer economic damage by failing to reduce emissions.
“Policy measures are available that would greatly reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases at modest economic cost,” the statement said. “Credible estimates suggest that a 50 per cent emissions reduction is achievable for less than one year’s economic growth.” “
bill parker said:
Four letter word: C O A L .
Sandi Keane said:
Howard won’t sign Kyoto because he’s in bed with the mining industry. As the biggest donor to the Liberal Party with nearly $11 million over the past 9 years, including the single biggest donation to any political party at the last election of close to $2 million, the mining industry has bought itself control of the climage change agenda. In Australia, clandestine donations to the Liberal Party from the mining lobby are funnelled through “fronts” such as the Cormack Foundation and Free Enterprise Foundation. This cynical act is designed to bypass transparency regulations. The same lobby donated bigtime to both of Bush’s presidential campaigns - but at least the donations were transparent. When Bush won his first election, an editorial appeared in The Age around that time predicting that Bush wouldn’t be signing Kyoto after receiving $US13 million from the coal lobby. When are we ever likely to see a major Australian daily criticise this cynical breach of the transparency regulations and expose Howard’s phony climate change agenda?