The Copenhagen climate change conference looks a dead duck at this stage. Jeopardising the minimum chances of climate change agreement is an extremely clever Australian proposal to create more chaos in the already fractured consensus on reduction of Greenhouse Gasses. 38 nations failed to agree on the Carbon emission norms over after the Kyoto proposal. Now the new Australian propsal strategically brought in 6 months before the Copenhagen summit wants 138 nations to agree over Green House Gasses. Bitterly opposed by the G77 countries this proposal is strange and ironic, coming from the biggest polluters themselves.
Supposedly aimed at reducing Global emissions worldwide and strategically supported by the U.S this Oz proposal will actually derail the climate change talks and create more divisions in the world then before. As a matter of fact this will ensure that the Copenhagen talks will fail before it begins.
For on one side of the debris of Copenhagen will lie the failed Kyoto Protocol that the developed nations are desperately trying to trash now that they have been unable to meet there commitments
Leading the pack of frontline developed nations that have failed curtailing emissions is Australia whose rise in Co2 emissions was a stupendous 42.6 % during the period 1990 to 2007 as per the latest UNFCC data released in Oct missions. 2009They were followed by Canada with 29.5 % and U.S. with 20.2% jump in emissions
Not surprisingly these frontline polluting states are somehow related to the fossil fuel industry in a big way. Besides being the key polluter, Australia is the worlds leading coal producer and exporter. Coal mining is not only a major industry in Australia which is the largest exporter of coal but its exports of coal are increasing in leaps and bounds notching up its highest jump of over 40% growth during 2005-2006 worth USD 24.5 billion.
http://www.australiancoal.com.au/the-australian-coal-industry_coal-exports.aspx
It is therefore understandable that business and commerce alone is a criteria that makes Australia a huge supporter of the Coal industry the worlds single largest producer of carbon. It is therefore no surprise that the Oz proposal is aimed to tear up the little consesu the world was reaching on reduction of Carbon , by throwing more players in the ring, some of whome have little role in creating the dangerous GHG levels of today No wonder that the world is hurtling towards yet another disaster on Climate Change
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