Isramart :Australian opposition dumps its leader over carbon trading bill

Isramart news:
Australia’s plans to pass new laws to tackle global warming ahead of next week’s key UN climate summit in Copenhagen have been thrown into chaos after the opposition party elected a new leader who has vowed to scupper the proposals.

Right-leaning Tony Abbott was narrowly elected the new leader of the conservative Liberal party and immediately moved to defer a vote on whether Australia should establish a carbon trading system, which would place a cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

The move could undermine the green bargaining power of Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, at the Copenhagen negotiations, which aim to agree a successor to the Kyoto protocol. It could also trigger a general election in Australia, which some observers say would be the world’s first electoral crisis prompted by climate change.

Abbott’s election followed a tumultuous week in Australian politics, which saw the ousting of Malcolm Turnbull as opposition leader, after he had pledged to support the government’s plans for the trading scheme. The conservatives split bitterly and publicly in the past week over the bill, culminating in the leadership challenge.

Abbott said his party would now move to defer the bill until after next weeks’ summit, and possibly longer. “This is going to be a tough fight. But it will be a fight. You cannot win an election without a fight,” he said.

Greg Combet, assistant climate change minister, said the government would still push for its carbon trade laws to be passed this week, and that he hoped some opposition lawmakers would defy Abbott to side with the government.

“The extremists have gained control of the Liberal party. They are opposed to taking action on climate change, they dispute the science,” Combet said.

Abbott’s critics portray him as a climate change sceptic, and he was quoted by a local paper as calling climate change “absolute crap”. He later backtracked: “That was a bit of hyperbole and it was not my most considered opinion. I think that climate change is real and that man does make a contribution.”

If the vote on the trading scheme is not deferred, the opposition would vote against it this week in the Senate, Abbott said. The government lacks a majority in the Senate, and the bill will almost certainly fail if the Liberals vote against it.

If it is defeated, Rudd can call an election at any time, under constitutional rules intended as the ultimate resolution of any deadlock between Australia’s two Houses of Parliament. Elections are due sometime in 2010, and opinion polls consistently show Rudd is so popular that he would probably win.

Rudd had wanted the legislation passed before the Copenhagen summit to help portray him as a world leader on tackling climate change. Rudd wants to slash Australia’s emissions by up to 25% below 2000 levels by 2020 if a tough emissions reduction deal is struck in Copenhagen. Abbott said that while the opposition was against the trading scheme, it still backed the government’s emissions reduction target.

Under the government’s emissions trading plan, an annual limit would be placed on the amount of greenhouse gases that can be pumped into the atmosphere and permits would be issued to regulate that ceiling. The permits could be bought and sold, setting up a market system that makes reducing emissions potentially profitable for polluting companies.

The prolonged debate on the trading scheme has caused some dismay among companies, coal and power firms in particular, who see some sort of scheme as inevitable and are looking for pricing certainty. Banks and fund managers see benefits for traders, investors and new green technologies, while major polluters generally oppose it as a tax on heavy industry.

Shrugging off opinion polls that say most Australians want the government to act against climate change, Abbott said the proposed system amounts to a massive new tax that would cramp the economy.

The European Union has a carbon trading system, and the US, Canada and New Zealand are among countries considering the idea. The US is watching Australia’s debate closely, as a political agreement on carbon trading in Australia could help build support for action in other countries.

Australia is a small greenhouse gas polluter in global terms, but one of the worst per capita because it relies heavily for its electricity on its abundant reserves of coal, which also make it the world’s largest exporter of the polluting fuel. As the driest continent after Antarctica, it is also considered one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change.