What will an ETS do for Australia’s Environment?
Australia is a young country blessed with an abundance of natural resources. During the first hundred years of settlement we grew rich from agriculture, in particular from exporting wool to the homeland England. More recently Australia has developed a mining sector and some now refer to us as the quarry for Asia. But with global warming concerns, and the likely introduction of an emissions trading scheme (ETS), the Australian economy will undergo radical change. The Carbon Pollution Reduction Bill is intended to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane. However, given that the big global polluters, including China and India, have no intention of signing up to such a scheme, it is also generally agreed that an Australian ETS will have no significant impact on global emissions or temperatures. Furthermore, there is nothing unique about the greenhouse gas intensive products currently exported from Australia. If we significantly add, for example, to the co
