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THE chief scientist, Penny Sackett, says Australia is moving too slowly to bring its greenhouse gas emissions under control, exposing the nation to high risks and financial costs, after the federal government's decision to shelve its emissions trading scheme.

The problem with performing a political backflip of such spectacularly high degrees of difficulty as Kevin Rudd shakily negotiated today is the haunting rhetoric which can come back to bite you in the ass.

In dumping Labor’s commitment to introduce an emissions trading scheme (ETS) this term, various media reports have pinned Rudd to comments he made in a speech to the Lowy Institute for International Policy last November. It’s worth republishing his remarks at length . . .

‘Baseload’ solar power; once a distant dream, is now a reality. While solar electricity was once limited to when the sun was shining, solar thermal energy can now operate 24 hours a day, even at night, with an ingenious and cheap storage method utilising molten salt.

“There are plants in Spain operating with energy storage right now, providing electricity all night long” Matthew Wright, Beyond Zero Emissions Executive Director said.

“Most Australians are not aware of this technology, even though it has the capacity to revolutionise the way we produce electricity and eliminate global warming pollution from coal”. 

After two weeks of around the clock negotiations and the participation of over a hundred world leaders, the Copenhagen climate change summit has ended in failure, producing a flimsy political agreement far weaker than even the most pessimistic observers expected at the start of the talks.

The agreement – hastily cobbled together on the last day of the talks by 28 nations, including host Denmark, the US and Australia – drew fierce criticism by developing countries left out of the meetings, claiming rich countries had staged a “coup détat” of the UN process.  

When the draft texts were presented in Copenhagen last Friday with proposed emissions reductions of between 30-45%, you could almost feel the wave of panic juddering through the delegates of the Annex 1 countries.

Cut emissions in line with the science? That would be insane. We might actually have to take action to cut our industrial pollution.

Almost immediately, the ‘umbrella group’ led by Australia rolled out the sadly predictable ‘blame China’ strategy. ‘Wong’s message for Beijing: Heat on China,’ bellowed The Australian’s front-page headline.

 Image/Info: www.aph.gov.au/library/Pubs/BN/sci/KyotoAccRules.htm