Climate debate is shrouded in smog

THIS week will see the resumption of Parliament in

Canberra and in particular the resumption of debatein the Senate on the Government's carbon pollution reduction scheme. On present indications, after a long series of speeches the scheme will be voted down. For several reasons, that is greatly regrettable. Industry needs certainty about the future invest­ment climate: there are already suggestions that power utilities, particularly Victoria's brown coal-powered generators, have reacted to the uncertainty by delay­ing necessary, but costly, upgrades. That will affect future power supplies across the national grid. Similar hesitation can be expected elsewhere.

Australia also should have a climate change response in place, if not in operation, before the UN conference on climate change begins this December which will negotiate a successor agreement to the Kyoto protocol. It is no argument for inaction to say Australia's aggregate contribution to global warming is small when Australians per head are the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in the world. To have standing at such a conference - to get Australia's voice heard where real change is likely to happen - Australia's negotiators ought to be able to demonstrate that this country is prepared to change its ways. It has a legacy of inaction, and a consequent repu­tation for selfishness, to over come from the Howard government's re­luctance to admit climate change was a problem. That legacy is clearly still active in parts of the Co­alition, which has yet to agree on whether climate change is hap­pening, and whether it is the result of human agency.

 Without a Senate majority, however, it is unlikely that Australia's climate change response will be known.The Government's difficulty with this issue, apart from an unsympathetic Senate, is that the public, while concerned about the environment and anxious to do something (whatever that might be) to fix it, can lose focus and interest when it comes to the detail of how to tackle the problem. Arguments about the relative merits of a cap-and-trade scheme, such as the Rudd and Obama governments propose, or a simple tax on carbon emissions, as A Coalition sometimes wants, become abstruse and technical.

The longer and more intense the debate, the greater the confusion, and the greater the public's sense of helplessness before this vast and fiendishly complex problem. Right now, the public is prepared to act, knowing that action is likely to require sacrifice in various forms. The great reservoir of public goodwill must not be squandered by our politicians seeking short-term advantage from frustrating necessary progress.