KEVIN Rudd might pull it all off - contribute to a meaningful agreement at Copenhagen, follow through with a greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme next year and then win a federal poll in which environment issues play strongly. But it's looking dicey.
Two years after Rudd was voted in as Prime Minister - The Economist recently called it the world's first climate change election - there is growing uncertainty about his Government's direction.
Rudd got a standing ovation in Bali in 2007 after signing up to the Kyoto Protocol but is now among those rich country leaders working to replace it.
Christine Milne, Australian Greens Senator, compares the Labor Party Climate Change Hypocrites (do almost nothing) with the Liberal Party Deniers (do worse than nothing), and compares them with Britain, where the Conservative Party has 'leapfrogged' the Labor Party in ambitious Climate Change policy, and in the polls.
KC Golden discusses the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the 'confidence gap' in which the general public understands that fossil fuel dependence is a bad idea, but they are still unaware of the existing renewable energy solutions that can replace it, and much more.
Janet is a co-author of a book called, ‘The Earth Policy Reader’, which tells us about how the global economic accounting system does not account for ecological deficits such as overfishing and unsustainable logging, and the large economic cost we suffer as a consequence.
As governments come to grips with the very difficult work that has to be performed in order to reach even a goal of 450 parts per million, the task can seem very daunting. But for those of us who do understand that the goal should be tougher still, let us remember that the early steps in a process of reaching a goal of 450 parts per million and a process to reach 350 parts per million, the early steps are very similar, and we know from experience that once the process of change begins, once the momentum shifts, once the decisions are arrived at, then the task often becomes easier in the doing.
