KEVIN RUDD has rejected as inadequate the offers by all major developed and developing nations to cut carbon emissions.
As the Prime Minister prepared to travel to the Copenhagen negotiations to help craft an agreement to contain global warming, he said all the major countries had to do better if the conference were to succeed.
Last night, a major power group, the G77 developing countries, walked out of several key meetings in protest against the threat of wealthy nations abandoning the Kyoto Protocol which forces rich countries to limit their emissions.
In an interview with the Herald yesterday, Mr Rudd listed the offers from China, India, the US and Europe to cut carbon emissions. The efforts so far were insufficient to meet the stated aim of capping temperature increases at two degrees.
''Additional effort will be required by developed and developing countries. We're not there yet. There is a way to go,'' he said.
In a wide-ranging interview, he also focused on the Coalition's policy of abandoning all support for an emissions trading scheme or any other market mechanism to reduce greenhouse gases. Instead, the Coalition will propose relying on better land management techniques and energy saving measures.
He said the approach would be expensive, unfunded and require excessive government regulation with ''an army of Canberra bureaucrats dictating what small businesses can do on the ground right across the country''.
''A magic pudding and bucket of red tape,'' he said.
The Prime Minister said the spirit of the ill-fated 1987 Joh-for-Canberra campaign had been revised and was driving the Coalition's policy agenda.
Mr Rudd outlined four sticking points that threatened a successful outcome at Copenhagen and said his job as a ''friend of the chair'' was to try to build a consensus between the developed and developing nations.
The four points were: the targets each country adopts; the level of compensation to be paid to developing countries; the best way to measure and police each nation's emissions; and how the Copenhagen agreement takes over from the Kyoto Protocol.
Mr Rudd played down the dramas and disputes that have preceded the arrival of world leaders at the conference, which he called ''the international sound and light show otherwise known as Copenhagen''.
The Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, said Mr Rudd had spent too much time focusing on the global picture and not enough explaining his scheme to Australians. A failure at Copenhagen would be a failure for the Prime Minister, he said.
Mr Rudd said he hoped Copenhagen would produce a ''binding operational agreement'' which would then develop into a greenhouse gas-reduction treaty binding all nations. Australia would not commit to do any more or less than other nations.
The five to 25pc target range for greenhouse gas reduction to which the Government was committed was adequate. ''That's our spectrum. We don't move beyond that,'' he said.
Mr Rudd said the emissions trading scheme was fully costed, modelled and compensation provided for, even if Australia left Copenhagen committed to a higher 2020 greenhouse gas reduction target than the unconditional 5 per cent.
''With a higher carbon price under a higher target there's greater compensation because there would be a greater amount of funds generated into the pool through … the sale of permits to Australia's biggest polluters.''
In an apparent backflip, China has signalled in the Financial Times it has dropped its demand for money from the developed world for climate change.
with Marian Wilkinson
Email a friend