Environment and Energy Management
In opposition, Rudd called climate change "the greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our time" and called for a cut to greenhouse gas emissions by 60% before 2050.
In October 2007, the then Prime Minister John Howard said that Labor's policy on climate change negotiations had no significant differences to the Liberals' policy. At the time, econometric research suggested that providers of carbon credits which had been accredited under the voluntary Australian Greenhouse Office trading scheme were capable of stabilising emissions, such was the demand from households for carbon-neutral products.
On 3 December 2007, hours after being sworn in, Rudd signed the Kyoto Protocol. Rudd described this action as a "significant step forward in our country's efforts to fight climate change domestically - and with the international community".
After a year of accounting of "emissions" and "sinks", the government published its climate change policies in a White Paper released on 15 December 2008. The White Paper mapped out a plan to introduce an emissions trading scheme in 2010 and recommended a target range for Australia's greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 of between 5% and 15% less than 2000 levels. It drew criticism from environmental groups and the Federal Government's climate change advisor, Professor Ross Garnaut. Garnaut said the government's conditional 2020 emission targets were too low, and said the planned assistance measures for Australian emissions intensive industries pose "profound" financial risk for the Government. In May 2009, Rudd announced an increase of the scheme target to 25% less than year 2000 levels, but that the introduction of the scheme would be delayed until July 2011.
In June 2010, the environment minister, Peter Garrett, revealed in an interview with Sky News that he first learned of the change in Government policy when he read about it, published in a newspaper after being leaked by a Government source. This followed damaging comments by Professor Tim Flannery, a strong supporter of Labor's scheme, that he felt "betrayed" by the Prime Minister's decision.
The Government articulated its stance on energy management in general in October 2009. Writing in The Australian Financial Review, the resources minister, Martin Ferguson, acknowledged that withholding resources such as coal (either black or brown) is unlikely to do much to assist in reducing emissions or alter demand. Instead the government hopes to become a world-leading investor in carbon capture and storage technologies, and is expanding Australia's natural gas production, while continuing to support a raft of new coal mining projects worth about $11 billion. The government also has plans to build up the entire renewable energy industry.
Read more about this topic: Rudd Government
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