Julia, sorry for response delay.
You dont quote any number of people who you associated with but state only 2 were concerned. Can you quantify? Ie 2/2 or 2/20 etc. For me I would say about 18/20 are concerned. Maybe your associates dont care but mine do.
How come Leaders of China/America/Japan/Australia/Africa/Asia etc all say that the current rapid rate of Climate change is anthropogenic (I did not need a dictionary) but many ASFers believe otherwise.
The previous PM tried to be popular but failled miserably and lost his seat plus that of government. Rudd is liked by many.
The Lib leader is outspokenly anti abortion as is National party. There are also some dissenters in ranks.
Julia as Australia is the biggest CO2 producer/emitter per H.o P. we have a responsibilty to do something and so do the rest. We are as with all things environmental way behind advanced European standards. The EU already has a trading system.
"The European Union Emission Trading System (EU ETS) is the largest multi-national, emissions trading scheme in the world,[1] and is a major pillar of EU climate policy. The ETS currently covers more than 10,000 installations with a net heat excess of 20 MW in the energy and industrial sectors which are collectively responsible for close to half of the EU's emissions of CO2 and 40% of its total greenhouse gas emissions.[2] [3]
Under the EU ETS, large emitters of carbon dioxide within the EU must monitor and annually report their CO2 emissions, and they are obliged every year to return an amount of emission allowances to the government that is equivalent to their CO2 emissions in that year. In order to neutralise annual irregularities in CO2-emission levels that may occur due to extreme weather events (such as harsh winters or very hot summers), emission allowances for any plant operator subject to the EU ETS are given out for a sequence of several years at once. Each such sequence of years is called a Trading Period. The 1st EU ETS Trading Period expired in December 2007; it had covered all EU ETS emissions since January 2005. With its termination, the 1st phase EU allowances became invalid. Since January 2008, the 2nd Trading Period is under way which will last until December 2012. Currently, the installations get the allowances for free from the EU member states' governments. Besides receiving this initial allocation on a plant-by-plant basis, an operator may purchase EU allowances from others (installations, traders, the government.) If an installation has received more free allowances than it needs, it may sell them to anybody.[citation needed]
In January 2008, the European Commission proposed a number of changes to the scheme, including centralized allocation (no more national allocation plans) by an EU authority, a turn to auctioning a greater share (60+ %) of permits rather than allocating freely, and inclusion of other greenhouse gases, such as nitrous oxide and perfluorocarbons.[3] These changes are still in a draft stage; the mentioned amendments are only likely to become effective from January 2013 onwards, i.e. in the 3rd Trading Period under the EU ETS. Also, the proposed caps for the 3rd Trading Period foresee an overall reduction of greenhouse gases for the sector of 21% in 2020 compared to 2005 emissions. The EU ETS has recently been extended to the airline industry as well, but these changes will not take place until 2012.[4][5]
Julia, I hope this response is suitably framed in the correct language for the diplomatic exchange of views. However I retain my right to express my dissapointment at the attitudes of those that deny anthropogenic climate change exists.