Posts tagged 'climate change'

In the week the Senate finally passed the carbon tax legislation, new research indicates that the amount of carbon emissions being released into the atmosphere grew by a record amount in 2010. The Washington Post reports that the current growth rate of carbon emissions exceeds the worst-case scenario of the last Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change report in 2007. This means that, according to a 2009 Massachussetts Institute of Technology report, the current rate of growth equates to a probability of a 5.2 degree celsius warming by the end of the century, with a 10% chance of a 7 degree warming. About two-fifths of the increase was attributable to China.

Click here to read an excellent summary of what the effects of such a temperature rise would be. In terms of food production alone, a University of Washington study, based on conservative assumptions, estimates that one-third of the planet could be facing desertification and half of the world’s population could be faced with a food crisis by the end of the century.

Interestingly, Bernard Keane in Crikey reports today that the carbon tax will in net terms cost the government more than its earns it for the foreseeable future.

Still not convinced? Here’s the video/podcast of our recent Intelligence Squared debate on the proposition, ‘A carbon tax won’t fix climate change’.

(Click to watch video.)

It’s one of those coincidences for which we can claim no credit. Months ago, when we pencilled in next Thursday, 15 September for an Intelligence Squared debate on the carbon tax, we didn’t know that the government’s legislation would be introduced into parliament that very week.

The Federal government is planning to introduce a package of 13 carbon tax-related bills into Parliament next week. It hopes debate over the legislation can begin by Wednesday, but the manager of opposition business, Christopher Pyne, claims the opposition has yet to see the full legislation and won’t allow the government to “rush this change through parliament”.

The opposition would prefer members to have a week to read the legislation before it then goes before a committee for further scrutiny. The government, hoping to pass the bills before the end of October, may choose to declare the legislation urgent and, in so doing, ‘gag’ debate. It’s also hoping to save time by forming a joint committee consisting of members of both the lower and upper houses, rather than the legislation having to pass through two separate committees, as would otherwise be the case.

Under Kevin Rudd’s prime ministership, the carbon tax’s predecessor, the carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS), was stalled in the Senate despite enjoying the nominal support of the opposition under its then leader, Malcolm Turnbull. The leader of the opposition in the Senate at the time was Senator Nick Minchin, who, unlike Turnbull, is a noted climate change sceptic. The opposition withdrew its support for the CPRS when Tony Abbott replaced Turnbull as opposition leader in December 2009, whereupon the legislation was defeated in the Senate on its second reading.

Although Tony Abbott’s position on climate change has shifted over time, he is on the record acknowledging that human-induced climate change is real, but that claims its effects will be catastrophic are as yet unproven. Abbott’s opposition to the carbon tax is predicated on the notion that a carbon tax won’t reduce emissions. “[I]t’s going to drive up prices, threaten jobs and do nothing at all for the environment,” he said in a televised address to the nation in July.

Greens Senator Christine Milne has stated the Greens fully support the Clean Energy Future legislative package. The Greens would like to see it clear parliament promptly so that organisations can begin preparing for the introduction of the carbon tax and other measures on 1 July next year.

The next Intelligence Squared debate will take place next Thursday, 15 September at the Melbourne Town Hall. Speakers will debate the proposition, ‘A carbon tax won’t fix climate change.’ We will live-tweet the event using the hashtag #iq2oz

In recent weeks, in the light of the stock market’s schizoid behaviour, a new argument has been added to the arsenal of opponents of the carbon tax. With stock markets around the world in chaos, some – including Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu – have argued the carbon tax will only add to stock market uncertainty. It’s an argument that doesn’t wash with Paul Burke, a research fellow at the Australian National University. On The Conversation, Burke argues, “If governments reacted to every piece of negative news by neglecting their long-term reform agenda, the quality of our overall governance would be substantially weakened.”

Meanwhile the Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett is pouring cold water over a proposal forwarded by the conference of his own party on the weekend calling for a royal commission into climate change. “"A royal commission into that?” he was quoted asking, “It’s not sensible. I support more science, more research, not a royal commission.”

Finally, after months of agitating grimly against the carbon tax, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott today called for a calmer approach to the debate. Addressing his party room before making an appearance at an anti-carbon tax rally attended by about 2,000 protesters (one wielding a sign that read, ‘Ditch the Witch’), Abbott said that members of parliament had a responsibility to be a “calming influence”.

The Wheeler Centre is hosting an Intelligence Squared debate on the carbon tax at the Melbourne Town Hall on Thursday, 156 September. Speakers include Tim Flannery and Adam Bandt.

The carbon tax debate is amping up ahead of Julia Gillard’s announcement of the long-awaited carbon tax specifics, to be broadcast nationally on Sunday night. Gillard has said that almost 70% of households will be compensated.

The government’s chief economic adviser, treasury secretary Dr Martin Parkinson (pictured), is on the record as a supporter of a carbon tax. He succeeded Ken Henry in the role only a few weeks ago after heading the government’s Department of Climate Change. In March, he weighed into the debate on a carbon tax, speaking before a Senate committee earlier this year, when he voiced his doubts that the Coalition’s direct action policies could achieve the target of a 5% cut of 2000-level carbon emissions by 2020.

Speaking at an emissions trading panel during the Deakin Lectures last year, Dr Parkinson said, “We conceptually have a choice between a carbon price and regulation.” (View the video here.) To meet our bipartisan target, said Parkinson, we need to take into account that, at current rates, our carbon emissions in 2020 will be 121% of 2000 levels, so in fact what’s required is not a 5% cut but a cut of 26%.

“Any effort to achieve the targets that we have adopted bipartisanly [sic] in Australia that relies on regulation essentially relies on bureaucratic prescience… Now that by itself is so patently unrealistic it should give us all cause for pause when we come to think about regulation. The second thing that’s important in thinking about regulation is just the sheer magnitude of the abatement task in front of us.”

The choice, in the Treasury chief’s view, is a no-brainer. “These are incredibly ambitious targets… So the bottom line for us is, can we meet these bipartisan targets without a carbon price? In my mind, there is absolutely no chance we can do so.” Maybe so, but some commentators, such as Bernard Keane writing in Crikey, wonder whether the proposed tax will achieve any emissions cut at all, questioning the wisdom of so many handouts to households and business.

“Climate science is a cumulative enterprise built upon hundreds of years of research. The heat-trapping properties of CO₂ were discovered in the middle of the 19th century, pre-dating even Sherlock Holmes and Queen Victoria.” So write scientists Michael Ashley and Stephan Lewandowsky in an article that ends a wide-ranging series on climate change in The Conversation. ‘The false, the confused and the mendacious: how the media gets it wrong on climate change’ is a withering but highly entertaining critique of anthropogenic climate change denialism in the media. It distinguishes between a sceptic, whose mind is open to the evidence, and a denialist, who will maintain her position regardless of the evidence. In evidential terms, the authors write that the debate on climate change is taking place outside, or at least on the fringes of, the scientific community. “The very fact,” the writers conclude, “that society is wracked by a phony debate where there is none in the scientific literature provides strong evidence that the Australian media has tragically and thoroughly failed the Australian public.”

Of the Wheeler Centre’s many videos and podcasts on the topic, we especially recommend Tim Flannery’s opening address for last year’s Alfred Deakin lecture series, Clive Hamilton on the coming climate change crisis, and David Suzuki on changing the relationship between economics and the environment. On climate economics, watch or hear James Cameron, Tim Jackson and our panel discussion on emissions trading.

(Click to watch video.)

Sophie Cunningham, noted writer and departing editor of Meanjin, delivered our Lunchbox/Soapbox last week on the topic of climate change and what seems to be a general paralysis in response to it. You can watch the full video or listen to the podcast.

Here’s an edited extract of Sophie’s presentation.

At about the time I was giving this talk – ‘Still Shocking’ – last week, Prime Minister Julia Gillard was announcing details of the government’s new carbon tax. The passionately expressed opposition to this is very relevant, I think, to the points I went on to make.

I first started thinking about the subject of change and how we deal with it when I was listening to the news coverage of Cyclone Yasi as a ‘200 year’ storm. The term is not exactly inaccurate – it is a way of saying there is a 0.5% chance that a storm of that severity that will occur. But the implication is that storms that large will only occur every 200 years when the confluence of extreme weather events recently suggests otherwise. In 1970, Alvin Toffler published Future Shock. It was – and I quote – “a book about what happens to people when they are overwhelmed by change. It is about the ways in which we adapt – or fail to adapt – to the future.” He called this failure to adapt an ‘illness’: future shock.

The thing about change is that none of us can avoid it.

One of the things I want to consider is the ways in which our personal reluctance to accept things, the very human nature of our responses, can become a dangerous thing. This is most explicitly the case when it comes to the work of climate change deniers. Deniers specialise in eliding the difference between weather and climate: short-term ebbs and flows versus long-term trends

Yes, it’s rained a lot lately, but this doesn’t changes the fact that most of the scientific community has forecast higher average temperatures and an increasing number of extreme weather events. This is a crucial point to make: the scientific community is in agreement about these issues.

So why is there such reluctance to act on this knowledge, and why do deniers get such airplay? I wish the issue were as simple as money and power. Unfortunately I think denialism is caused by something more entrenched, and harder to fight: fear. Let me return to Future Shock:

One widespread response to high-speed change is outright denial. The Denier’s strategy is to ‘block out’ unwelcome reality. When the demand for decisions reaches crescendo, he flatly refuses to take in new information. Like the disaster victim whose face registers total disbelief, the Denier, too, cannot accept the evidence of his sense … An unknowing victim of future shock, the Denier sets himself up for personal catastrophe. His strategy for coping increases the likelihood that when he finally is forced to adapt, his encounter with change will come in the form of a single massive life crisis, rather than a sequence of manageable problems.

The problem for us, of course, is that it’s the planet itself that is in crisis, not just individuals. No matter how scary the forecasts for the future, I would argue with knowledge comes agency.

Sophie Cunningham will be one of the presenters at tonight’s Big Gay Week event, The Only Gay Book in the Village, alongside Benjamin Law, Fiona McGregor and William Yang.

Click to watch video.

One of the big issues that cost the government at the Victorian State Election was the environment. Mark Wakeham spoke just before the election at our final Lunchbox/Soapbox about the challenges facing the Baillieu Government including closing Hazelwood Power Station (“the most polluting power in the country”), the Murray Darling Basin and logging in the state. As we face another new paradigm, Wakeham looks at the absence of environment policy from the Coalition.

Click to watch video.

As part of our Matter of Life and Death events, David Suzuki opened his address by saying he was in the “death zone” where he wants to reflect on the legacy that he’ll be able to leave the world.

“The web of living things around the world… delivers the most fundamental things that we need to survive and flourish”, but even as “clever animals” humans are doing the stupidest things to their planet. He sees that our need for constant growth cannot fit with the urgent need to stop climate change, reduce pollution and reclaim our world. As Suzuki says “We have to get on with re-imagining the future – that’s what got us to this point: our ability to look ahead and dream of a future where we could avoid danger and exploit opportunity. We have to re-imagine that world.”

What will Franzen wear next time on the Time cover?

You know you’re a superstar author when even losing your glasses is a major news story with it’s own Twitter hashtag, #glassesgate.

GQ magazine has the first eyewitness report of how Franzen had his glasses snatched off him at a book party in London. According to their report Franzen has been sent a ransom note saying “‘$100,000 Your glasses are yours again!’ accompanied by a Hotmail email address.” Pranksters have put up a fake entry on eBay stating “We have Franzen’s glasses. The Great American Novelist has ‘lost’ them.”

Click to see the full video

As Prof Tim Flannery releases Here on Earth, it’s the perfect time to re-visit his keynote address at the Alfred Deakin Lecture series. Flannery challenges the popular perceptions of Darwin’s evolution and asks why our planet is our highest priority.

Recently Australia celebrated the 60th anniversary of the momentous Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Power Act – the first step in a 25-year journey to modernise our nation. Unrivalled in its ambition, the Snowy Mountains Scheme would meet the dual objectives of providing reliable electricity for our cities and towns, and water supplies to sustain food production along the Murray River.

Australia’s largest-ever engineering project would spur social and economic development and benefit the cities and rural communities of Australia’s southeast for generations. Without fanfare or media attention, Australia forgot to acknowledge a significant moment in our nation’s history.

Today Australia faces new challenges: our climate is changing. And we must quickly transition to a clean energy economy to avoid the worst-case scenarios predicted by climate scientists. Alongside this comes the continued global economic change that is putting increased pressure on established industries. Our parliament must act to encourage the expansion of new industries and secure jobs for the future.

A new nation-building project on the scale of the Snowy Mountains Scheme is needed.

The backbone of a scheme for the 21st century will rewire the nation, laying the foundations for a clean energy revolution. Australia needs new transmission lines to connect population centres to our abundant renewable energy resources. Currently, our windy southern coast; our vast deserts; and our rich geothermal resources, are untapped. A renewable electricity grid can open up new regions to development, unleash private investment in renewable energy production, and allow for these new energy markets to flourish. It’s needless to say that this comes with new jobs, prosperity, and the important benefit of mitigating climate change.

Importantly, such a scheme will overcome the deficiencies of the Rudd Government’s so-called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Emissions trading will not build new electricity grids, particularly to remote places rich with renewable resources. High capital costs and the lack of short-term profitability of building this type of infrastructure is beyond the capacity of the private sector. Furthermore, building new grid infrastructure does not directly reduce emissions and will therefore not benefit from emissions offset markets. Our government must step in to provide the public investment and long-term vision required to carry out such a scheme.

While carbon reductions targets and “market-based” policies might captivate bureaucrats and policy wonks, they have failed to win the hearts and minds of Australian citizens. These policy tools say nothing about Australia’s collective aspirations and abilities, and miss the opportunity to generate the public support necessary to build a clean energy economy. Because emissions trading is not directly linked to specific projects it is unable to capture the public’s imagination the way that monumental, government-backed projects have in the past. The best examples of which include the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Snowy Mountains Scheme.

I’m not the first Australian to call for a massive nation-building project. In 2006, Professor Tim Flannery attempted to capture public imagination by evoking the spirit of the Snowy Scheme. He proposed the construction of a sustainable city in the heart of Australia called “Geothermia”. The city would harness geothermal and solar energy to process mineral resources. New rail lines would connect key mines to the mineral-processing hub, and then to the port of Darwin for export. This was a big vision.

So why didn’t Flannery’s initiative gain traction? And would a similar proposal work now? Well, apart from Flannery’s poor choice of name, I think there are two good reasons that explain the lack of interest, and the context has changed enough for a visionary project to succeed. First, the neo-liberal consensus was still strong in 2006. John Howard was the PM and the prevailing economic orthodoxy prohibited large-scale public investment. The financial crisis of 2008-9 has since undermined the neo-liberal consensus and governments around the world are now implementing massive public investment programs.

Second, climate change and environmental advocates did not support the plan. For too long climate change advocates have focused on technocratic and uninspiring policy proposals – a 20 per cent carbon reduction target by 2020 and the implementation of carbon trading. With several environmental groups now opposing the Rudd Government’s CPRS and proposing a “Plan B”, there is now a window of opportunity for these advocates to adopt a new campaign that focuses on building the enabling infrastructure of a clean energy economy.

I suspect environmental advocates are reluctant to employ a powerful myth because of the Snowy Scheme’s environmental impacts. It’s true that the scheme harmed the Snowy River, but this should not disqualify the use of Australia’s myths and nation-building projects for responses to climate change. Environmental advocates must also overcome the false perception that “strong” reduction targets guarantee emissions reductions. On the contrary, because an effective response to climate change requires building the infrastructure for a clean energy economy, the Snowy Scheme is a better model than one that emphasises targets and trading.

Is Australia ready for a massive nation-building project to deal with the twin challenges of climate and global economic change? Yes it is. As the Parliament demonstrated 60 years ago, our political leaders must act in Australia’s long-term interest to ensure that such a project becomes a reality.

Cross posted from the Real Ewbank, the blog of Leigh Ewbank.

Deakin Series curator Tim Flannery has fired another at salvo at Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in the latest issue of the Monthly.

Flannery characterises Rudd’s policy move as “a funk in the truest sense of the word: a shirking of responsibility”. Flannery believes it is motivated by polls indicating that “the public is wearying of the issue”. But Flannery hasn’t quite given up on the PM as his article closes with the hope of “an honourable backflip by the prime minister on his decision to defer from Carbon Pollutions Reduction Scheme”.

This counter backflip, perhaps more properly a ‘frontflip’, makes even more sense in the context of BP’s environmental poisoning of the Gulf of Mexico and “the possibility that coal’s catastrophic equivalent could be the entire world.”

After the disappointment of Copenhagen, Bonn’s climate change talks have been called “a slow grind” by ABC Online.

Beginning on Monday, the Bonn talks are being watched closely by Pacific nations as they are already seeing the impact of global warming. The tiny nation of Tuvalu roared at Copenhagen by demanding legally binding agreements and tougher action to limit rising sea levels and climate change refugees, but their alternative agreement was dismissed.

The Solomon Island Times opened its coverage of the Bonn talks by highlighting the $30billion dollars promised by industrialised nations “to kick start climate action in developing countries.”

The Manila Bulletin was more upbeat because UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon mentioned the province of Albay as “among the first local governments which have already committed… to a two-year UN Campaign dubbed, ‘Making Cities Resilient’”. The campaign is aimed at disaster preparedness in the event of natural and climate change disaster.

The Fijian publication Islands Business however was more pessimistic, saying that not only would the Bonn talks yield no agreement, but talks later this year in Cancun would similarly not create a workable document. As they see it, China won’t even be looking at signing a binding international treaty until talks in South Africa which won’t be until late 2011.

We’ve just released a limited amount of new seats for the Deakin Lecture series keynote address this Sunday with Tim Flannery.

Flannery has long been at the vanguard of Australia’s environmental thinking with his book The Weather Makers called “a tour de force” by the Washington Post. He recently made headlines for changing his position not just on geosequestration but also on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

His opening keynote for the week-long Deakins Lecture series promises to be so good that we had to find a few more seats.

The media buzzed with news that Deakins Series curator Tim Flannery has switched his position on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and on carbon capturing.

The Australian reported from Flannery’s speech yesterday to green business that in terms of climate change Australia was “one of the wooden spooners”. Flannery came out strongly critical of Rudd. He told the Australian “Politics is all about trust. The only thing a politician’s really got to sell is his trust.” Flannery also mentioned that he was “unlikely” to vote for Rudd at this year’s election.

ABC Online thought Flannery “blasts [the] PM over ‘breach of faith’” while the Advertiser took it more personally as “Flannery accuses Rudd of climate betrayal of trust”. It may have something to do with the Moomba Carbon Storage facility planned for northeastern South Australia.

The Sydney Morning Herald focused on Flannery’s change of tack on carbon capture – the idea that carbon should be buried under the earth to prevent further damage.

It represents a real shift in Flannery’s thinking because he’s previously been an advocate of the controversial technology. ‘'I have been a great proponent of carbon capture and storage because I believed it was just essential particularly in places like China. But … the idea that coal is the future is a big problem for us.’'

Not everyone agrees on climate change. Quadrant Online’s Doomed Planet questions global warming publishing Andrew Gilkson’s argument that there is a “widening gulf between scientific observations around the globe and public perceptions of the nature and origin of climate change”. They’ve wagged a finger at the Deakin Lecture Series for the event’s lack of climate change skeptics.

We think they’ve missed the point. The Deakin Lecture series in 2010 is not about debating climate science – there are plenty of bloggers already discussing that. Rather the Deakins are taking on board one of the pressing issues of our time and considering the impact that discussion is having on different spheres of modern life, from business and industry to our cities and farms.

Our speakers have been chosen for their track record of working within the context of the present debate, not because of any fixed political position on that debate. Speakers like Prasad Menon who heads up India’s largest power company are difficult to pidgeonhole as warmist. Engineer Stephen Joseph is looking at ways of re-tooling farms and industry for the future. And while speakers like Baroness Valerie Amos may upset Gerard Hendserson, they come to climate change with an international perspective on how Australia measures up.

Working as Head of Programming for the Wheeler Centre has brought its surprises, its challenges and its learning curves, but perhaps none as pronounced as working on the 2010 Alfred Deakin Lecture series. Under the guidance of Curator Tim Flannery and Strategic Director Nick Rowley, I’ve been introduced to a whole (dare I say it brave) new world of people working to improve their work practices, their businesses and their ways of life in the face of climate change.

I consider myself an engaged and well-informed person, one with a social conscience who is passionate about campaigning for a range of issues from human rights to the environment. From time to time I would even have referred to myself as an activist in those areas. But if I’m being completely honest, I’d have to admit that I know very little about climate change. I believe in it. I believe it’s the most serious problem confronting the human race. So I… I recycle and turn off lights when I leave rooms. I am guilty of the very thing it infuriates me to hear the government hide behind: climate change fatigue. Because let’s face it, with a problem this big, nearing a saturation point of endless talk and discussion and reportage, it’s hard to know where to start. My brain has been as switched off as my electrical appliances. I care, but what of it?

As we’ve gathered the speakers together for the intensive week of Deakins 2010, I’ve begun to learn and listen again. I’m unlikely to be working in high-end finance, but reading essays by Denny Ellerman or John Daley has opened my eyes to the ways in which big business shouldn’t be hiding behind the cost of things, the ways business could be overhauled to respond to the new world order. I’m probably never going to have to do extensive agricultural work, but Johannes Lehmann’s thoughts on what could be done with soils have already helped make me see the world differently.

I can say geo-sequestration without giggling, so that feels like some kind of personal growth. Overcoming my own fatigue has been about feeling better informed and better armed with the individual changes we can be lobbying our government and our businesses for. I can’t wait for the conversation to begin on June 6. I still have a lot to learn.

Michael Williams is the Head of Programming at the Wheeler Centre.

Cold climates dwellers have been smugly thinking global warming will bring sunnier weather. The Guardian's review of Turned Out Nice, Britain will become more like the Mediterranean. London will be “an urban heat island” with later sunsets encouraging strolls “sultry summer evenings the royal parks”. Except “grass in the parks will be scorched and dry” and “blighted areas will be occupied by climate refugees who work as servants”. So a sunny future for some as Britons have become less concerned about climate change.

And who will those climate change refugees be? Bob Geldof was in Melbourne last week just long enough to tell Australians they will become “the boat people” of Asia as global warming dramatically changes our island. Geldof told the Age “You’ll be the boat people… Whatever is going to happen with climate change, it is happening. You can disagree on the science, but it is happening.”

Closer to home the future of wind farms around Melbourne seems more certain. More than 110 turbines will whirl into action at Moorabool Wind Farm and Minister for Planning Justin Madden has backed another 14 turbines at Yaloak South. Locals fear a possible fire hazard and possible threats to the wedge-tailed eagle.

Earlier this week, the US National Research Council released three reports on climate change calling for decisive action to limit carbon emissions.

Originally commissioned by Congress in 2008, the documents push for a greenhouse gas emissions “budget” limiting overall emissions with a measurable goal for government and industry. It stops short of a specific target but the New York Times said “advocates of climate and energy legislation embraced the reports.”

The New York Times piece points to the reports as clear evidence of the human impact on the planet. It contends that “climate change is a reality and is driven mostly by human activity” – a point that environmentalists have been making for decades.

Both Tim Flannery and Nick Rowley come to the Deakin Lectures as veterans of last year’s Copenhagen Climate Change Summit. After the disappointing outcome of that conference we asked both presenters, why sign up for more talk on climate change?

Series Moderator Rowley sees the lectures as a chance to continue the debate. “At a time when the public debate is confused, the politics a mess, but the risks only more clear, we need to hear from those with deep understanding and experience of what it takes to meaningfully address the climate change. More than bold words from the stage, each Deakins lecture will challenge the audience and allow us to question what it will take to address this most wicked of problems."

For Series Curator Tim Flannery it’s about action shifting from the political to the personal. “Accepting we have a problem, and doing something about it, are two different things. As we move towards taking action we need to hear from leaders who have changed things, in their business, political party or community: innovators who have succeeded in addressing an aspect of the climate problem.”

“You may not have heard of some of them, but in their spheres they’re global champions. That’s why this year’s Deakins are so important. They give us the chance to learn from the world’s most successful game-changers in the climate arena, and so to lift our own game.”

Reuters reports that debate on reducing carbon emissions is in “legislative limbo”. A draft proposal of almost 1000 pages was issued last week, but little has been done to get it on the US Senate’s agenda.

Senator John Kerry highlighted the recent Gulf of Mexico oil spill which “should also drive a serious national dialogue and a debate on legislation this year to advance our nation’s clean energy future.”

But others in the Senate are skeptical of the bill even getting discussed in 2010. Senator Carl Levin told Reuters “My feeling is it’s not going to be coming up this year, but if it does I will dig into it at great depth.”

Green lobbyists are speculating that the overly complicated 1000-page proposal was tailor made for filibustering – the Senate’s means of preventing legislation ever being passed by excessive debates.

Tony Abbott has done a lot to impress Malcolm Turnbull with his new-found praise for Coalition policy on climate change.

Back in December 2009 Turnbull’s blog entry scolded “Mr Abbott apparently knows what he is against, but not what he is for.” Turnbull pointed to Abbott’s lack of financial thinking about replacing coal-fired power stations, but this week Abbott’s ideas were “superior to the Rudd government’s climate change policy vacuum”.

Turnbull’s blog entry was a call for real leadership on climate change. “Now politics is about conviction and a commitment to carry out those convictions.”

Malcolm Turnbull is on the panel for Politics of Climate Change.

Science magazine this month features an article on the extinction of lizards, attributing their demise to global warming. Up to a fifth of the world’s lizards could disappear by 2080 with a horrific ripple effect across the food chain as birds and insect numbers will be impacted.

ABC Science pointed out that although cold-blooded reptiles should thrive in a warmer climate, increased temperatures will be too hot even for lizards because the heat will reduce their activity “including limiting their efforts to find food”.

Biologists' models project 6% falls in lizard populations by 2050 and 20% by 2080.

As Britain meets its new power-sharing leaders, climate change policy is caught in the middle, according to The Independent.

Pre-election slogans from the Conservative party to “vote blue, go green” have been muddied by the Liberal-Democrats who disagree with their new political bedfellows on several key issues. Already the new Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne (a Lib-Dem cabinet appointee) has surrendered nuclear energy policy to his Conservative deputy, Charles Hendry.

Not only do the parties disagree on nuclear power, but substantial rifts exist on renewable energy and offshore drilling. Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron has announced, however, that his will be “the greenest government ever” with ministerial departments will drop their carbon by 10%.

Greenpeace advertisments will greet world leaders as they arrive in Copenhagen for the Climate Change Conference this week, but Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and others may not be thrilled but what they see.

The ads each depict the politicians as they might be in 2020, prematurely grey, with captions apologising for failing to halt catastrophic climate change.

In an article in today's Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Singer likens greenhouse gas emissions to dropping bombs.

"We are harming people in Bangladesh almost as surely as if we were dropping bombs on them,” says Australia's best-known philosopher, who is talking at the Wheeler Centre in February.