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Australia vows to resist pressure for "carbon lite"
01 Jul 2008 02:47:41 GMT
 Source: Reuters
SYDNEY, July 1 (Reuters) - Australia vowed on Tuesday to resist pressure to water down plans for an emissions-trading scheme as surveys showed voters were becoming increasingly alarmed at the likely consequence: higher energy prices.

Newspaper polls showed voters were at best divided and at worst plain confused about government plans to cap emissions and create a trading system that would penalise polluters and threaten to further raise fuel prices and electricity bills.

The polls come just days before the government's climate-change adviser, Ross Garnaut, issues a report on carbon emissions policy options on Friday.

Australia's left-leaning government, which won a stunning election victory last November on a green agenda, said it would not bow to political pressure to go for a weak system of emissions curbs.

"The government is not designing an emissions trading scheme on the basis of (opinion) polls, we're designing it for the long-term economic future of the country," Climate Change Minister Penny Wong told ABC radio.

"I think what Australians have shown us, as was demonstrated in the lead-up to the election last year, (that they) are concerned about climate change, they are concerned about its economic impacts and its environmental impacts and they want political leaders to do something about it."

A survey published in The Australian showed 61 percent of voters still favoured the concept of emissions trading and a slim majority would even pay "more for energy" as a result, but that support fell away sharply when voters were asked if they would pay more for their own transport emissions at the petrol pump.

Another survey in the Herald-Sun daily suggested many voters had not even been aware of the consequences when they had warmly embraced the ruling Labor party's green agenda at elections.

The Herald-Sun survey found 72 percent in favour of emissions curbs and an even greater majority wanted them applied to transport, but more than 90 percent admitted to knowing nothing or little about how these curbs would affect the economy.

"More than half of Australians have 'no idea' what carbon trading is as the Rudd Government prepares to force up prices to cut greenhouse emissions," the Herald-Sun said on its front-page.

The political temperature surrounding emissions-trading has soared ahead of Garnaut's report.

Garnaut has already suggested that fuel should be included in the regime, arguing that to leave it out would only put a greater burden on other polluting industries in order to meet Australia's overall commitment to the Kyoto climate protocol.

Even without the additional burden of an emissions cap, high fuel prices are angering voters, with truck drivers forming a protest convoy on Tuesday on a major commuter route into Sydney, though no major traffic jams were reported.

After the Garnaut report, the government is due to prepare a green paper, expected later this month, to canvass options for a emissions-trading scheme, before introducing legislation to parliament possibly by end-2008.

The government plans to have a carbon trading scheme in place by 2010 and has so far not ruled out sensitive sectors such as transport and fuel from a future emissions regime. (Reporting by Mark Bendeich; Editing by Valerie Lee)


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