Australian politicians spar over new energy policy; state premier calls Federal plan “a weakened re-packaging of state schemes”

In Australia, the South Australian premier Mike Rann said that the Australian federal government had missed the opportunity to make Australia a leader in global renewable energy development. The premier was commenting on the national Clean Energy Target, under which low-emission sources would account for 30,000 gigawatt hours per year by 2020 – about 15 per cent of Australia’s energy consumption. “Instead of a new plan to tackle climate change, the commonwealth has given us a substantially weakened re-packaging of state schemes and tried to sell it in the name of streamlining,” Mr Rann said.

Yesterday, a prominent researcher called on both the Australian and South Australian governments to get behind biofuels research and development.

President Bush recently spoke about efforts by Australian Prime Minister John Howard to put climate change at the center of the recent APEC meeting agenda: “John and I have talked about his desire to put climate change at the forefront of APEC, and I was a strong supporter of that. I also reminded him that at the G8, I took the message that said to our partners there that if you really want to really solve the global climate change issue, let’s get everybody to the table. Let’s make sure that countries such as China and India are at the table as we discuss the way forward. Otherwise, I suspect, if they feel like nations are going to cram down a solution down their throat and not give them a voice on how to achieve a common objective, they’ll walk. And then you can’t have effective global climate change, if a nation like China is not involved.”

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