Australia delays on climate action, against its own will.

This post was written by Nic Seton.

A recent poll shows that 79 percent of Australians believe that Australia should either begin reducing carbon pollution before other countries, or start reducing regardless of when other countries choose to act. But the government’s recent decision to delay action on climate change through the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme compromises the future viability of Australian culture and is a betrayal of a public who voted for a government that promised action on climate change. WWF Australia CEO, Greg Bourne, described the move as elevating “opportunism over the welfare of future generations.” Scheduled to start next year, the scheme is now delayed until as late as 2013.

Things looked so good. In a landslide Labor victory in 2007 a new government came to power in what was called the world’s first climate election. The most popular Prime Minister in decades, Kevin Rudd, took the podium at the UN climate talks in Bali that same year. He received a standing ovation on behalf of the last developed country, besides the US, to ratify the Kyoto Protocol (an international agreement which sets out to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions). Australia had world leading conservation policies, a booming renewable electricity industry and a cultural awakening to the reality of drought that was to become the norm.

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