The Wire

Over the weekend the Federal Government unveiled its approach to tackling climate change, vowing to set a target for reducing global warming-causing gases in 2008, after the Federal election. Prime Minister John Howard also noted that a re-elected Coalition Government would aim to commence an emissions trading scheme by 2012. While business groups and some economists have welcomed the move as providing certainty to the market, other observers have claimed that action is needed now on climate change – as the phenomenon could pass the point of being able to be controlled by human activity in 2015.