Australia pledged to cut its greenhouse emissions by 5 to 15 percent by 2020 as it unveiled yesterday the world's broadest carbon trading scheme, rebuffing business calls for a delay due to the global slowdown.

While Australia is now second only to the European Union in its drive to cut emissions by establishing a cap-and-trade system that puts a price on carbon output, critics said the target was too weak and blasted the trading plan that will give free credits to some of the economy's most carbon-intensive industries.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the carbon scheme was vital for Australia, which has the fourth-highest per-capita greenhouse gas emissions in the world, and five times more per person than China, due to its reliance on coal for electricity.

"Without action on climate change, Australia faces a future of parched farms, bleached reefs and empty reservoirs," Rudd told the National Press Club.

But some carbon market participants said the system, details of which Canberra unveiled yesterday ahead of approval by parliament expected next year, may fall far short of what's required in the global fight against climate change.

And the government said Australia would only target the full 15 percent cutback if a global deal emerges from UN talks in Copenhagen in late 2009, angering environmentalists who had hoped Rudd would follow through on his green electoral mandate by taking a leading role in cutting global emissions.

"It's a total and utter failure. It's madness. Climate change is happening much faster than people thought. Five percent, which is what we are looking at, is an outrage," Greenpeace climate campaigner John Hepburn said.

Friends of the Earth called the plan a "polluters' paradise."

Scientists and green groups wanted cuts of at least 25 percent but the carbon scheme comes at a politically sensitive time for the government, with the mid-2010 start date set only months before it is due to hold elections to seek a second term.

Australia's target is far shy of the 20 percent reduction that Europe has promised and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommendation of up to 40 percent by then, and underscores the challenge world governments face in finding a successor to the Kyoto Protocol in the next 12 months.

Rudd defended the targets by saying they were more aggressive on a per-capita basis than those in the European Union.

The government also said the scheme would only trim about 0.1 percent off annual growth in gross national product from 2010 to 2050, with a one-off increase in inflation of around 1.1 percent.

"You could say that the decision came down to a choice between the environment and the economy and at this stage it looks like the economy has won," said Gary Cox, head of environmental derivatives at global brokers Newedge.

(China Daily via Agencies December 17, 2008)