THE Government's green paper on carbon trading uses adjectives like "smoother", "gradual", and "measured" to describe the scheme's implementation, because cutting Australia's emissions by 60% in four decades is going to produce profound structural change, and, inevitably, political repercussions. Like a dentist poised above you, drill in hand, the Government wants to warn us the process will be difficult and reassure us it will be no more painful than is necessary.

Australian households will receive either tax cuts or increased family payments to offset higher electricity and fuel prices, as the government admits its climate change plan will drive up inflation. The framework of Labor's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme has been released in Canberra, detailing the government's plan to meet its target of bringing down greenhouse emissions by 60% by 2050. The higher family assistance may start before the trading system begins on July 1, 2010, possibly ahead of the next election.

THE Federal Government's draft legislation for a world-first regulated carbon capture and storage (CCS) system has failed to pass muster with the very groups it is meant to help, including backers of the $5 billion Monash Energy coal-to-liquids project in the Latrobe Valley. Complaints with the draft legislation raise doubts about the Government's plan to make CCS integral to Australia's move to an emissions trading system under a policy paper to be released today by Climate Change Minister Penny Wong.

For most of India Inc, tackling the adverse impact of climate change is second preference as they aim for growth and expansion, claims a study, which also warns that such an approach will cost the firms dearly in future.

About 1,000 of Australia's biggest polluting companies will need to buy permits under an emissions trading scheme expected to be introduced in 2010 to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the minister for climate change, Penny Wong said on Sunday. Australia, highly dependent on coal for making electricity and generating hundreds of billions of dollars in annual export revenue, is scheduled to release a paper on Wednesday spelling out guidelines for how it intends to implement emissions trading.

Environmentalists are seething after the administration of US president George W Bush delayed any decision on regulating greenhouse gases, likely leaving any substantive action to his successor. The Environmental Protection Agency issued a 588-page report Friday that cites

AUSTRALIA lags behind most rich nations in taking the easiest steps to make an emissions trading scheme as cheap as possible: becoming more energy efficient at home, work and on the road. Due largely to a love of petrol-guzzling cars and an energy-intensive manufacturing sector, Australia's energy efficiency improved at only a third of the rate of the OECD average between 1990 and 2004. According to a report released today by the Climate Institute, only Canada and the US, among developed countries, use more energy than Australia on the goods and services they produce.

India

Vladimir Radyuhin Russian scientists deny that the Kyoto Protocol reflects a consensus view of the world scientific community. As western nations step up pressure on India and China to curb the emission of greenhouse gases, Russian scientists reject the very idea that carbon dioxide may be responsible for global warming.

K. Venugopal Sapporo: Leaders of 16 of the world's major economies meeting at the venue of the G8 summit at Toyako in northern Japan found enough common language to take forward their negotiations on how to mitigate the challenge of climate change. Yet it was not quite the language that India would have liked. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said as much when he told the leaders, including U.S. President George Bush, that "even if some of our views have not been incorporated as we would have wished, we should adopt the text as it is.'

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