The Forum > Article Comments > Will Australia's emissions policy encourage global action? > Comments
Will Australia's emissions policy encourage global action? : Comments
By Geoff Carmody, published 16/11/2011Any ETS will be a market for paper shuffling, speculation, price volatility and little global emissions abatement.
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Unfortunately "toughness" of emissions targets is a highly ambiguous concept.
Would a target of N tonnes CO2 per head per year, applied to all countries, be an equally "tough" target?
Or would a target of N% reduction from current emission levels, applied to all countries, be an equally "tough" target?
Those would be two _enormously_ different target regimes.
Or does "toughness" refer to the difficulty a country would have in complying with a target?
This is an important issue since one of the many reasons trotted out in some quarters for doing nothing about CO2 emissions is that developing nations also need to be included in any deal. Whereas in fact the emissions of those developing nations are far less, per head, than even the lowest targets proposed for this country.