Five percent

Carbon emissions by region

So Rudd has announced that we're going to reduce our greenhouse emissions by a staggering five percent. How ambitious! Worse, every polluting industry and his lobbyist appear to be in line to get a handout, giving them no incentive to reduce emissions. All the while the industries that aren't carbon-intensive don't get a handout!

Note that Australia's Kyoto target was for an 8% increase in emissions on 1990 levels by 2012. We're unlikely to even make this target, despite the fact that we managed to get the "Australia clause" into the treaty, which allows us to include the extraordinary land clearing in our 1990 baseline levels.

This new soft commitment is, instead, from a baseline of our 2000 emission levels, so you can't even compare it to our Kyoto commitment, and I suppose, means we'll still be emitting more than we did in 1990 by the time we hit 2020!

What's the point? So much noise, so little impact.

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