The uncomfortable conclusion is that China and India have too many people to achieve Western middle class lifestyles; that is car driving, steak eating, air conditioned and taking holiday travel. Nicholas Stern suggests China's 300m middle class has comparable emissions to the West and the other billion miss out. In India 800m are without electricity. Australia is supplying both these countries with coal yet our recent 2% population surge is higher than theirs. Even if the West adopts a more frugal standard as a benchmark for a global middle class it's hard to see how there will be enough to go round. No doubt some green utopians will insist there is, oblivious to the amounts of fossil fuel that underpin their comfortable lifestyle.

Compounding the problem is the likelihood that some poor countries won't have enough economic clout to maintain a share of dwindling oil supplies. Perhaps a starting point for global carbon cuts is that countries should appreciate what they already have. An equitable formula may be that the rich will have less but the poor will stay the same.

Not another one. I wonder what his angle is? A nice profitable business for his clients, or a few government jobs for his company?

No mate, what we need is to realise that there is no emission burden to abate.

CO2 is lower than for most of the time that life has existed on earth. It needs a higher level of CO2. By accident, we are doing
something that life on the planet needs to be done.

Why is it that all these financial people sprout this rubbish.

Are they the dumbest on earth, or is it the quid they can see behind all this? When it looks like a train, sounds like a train, & spills gravy, it's probably a gravy train.

CO2 trading- scam of the century.

I think the author is wrong that Australia shouldn't act without a global deal; now or later, it has to get done. We need to be a low emissions economy but only if everyone else does seems like an excuse to not do it at all. Others may be happy to believe all the scientists who study climate at the world's leading institutions are wrong on something like this but I can't do it; I won't risk betting our future that the experts, after more than a decade of intense scientific efforts are wrong, and we should ignore all the warnings. Not on this. On that basis I don't see that action on climate change is optional.
I think that calling for Australia to do no more than other nations is urging us to fail on climate change; for a major contributor as the world's biggest coal exporter and highest per capita emitters what we do does matter and are reasons to do more. They shouldn't be excuses to do the least.

Oh Ken Fabos we are going to have a low emission economy whether we
want it or not.
The latest thoughts out of the International ASPO conference is that
if oil costs an economy more than about 4% of GDP it will go into recession.
Some say we are there now, near 4%.
In any case we do not need the scheme that made the Russian Oligarchs
rich from emission trading with Europe.
Did anyone see Landline this week ?
They did 40 minutes on emission trading for US farmers.
How on earth do they expect, with millions of farmers trading in
credits for cash do they expect to know what paddocks the farmers
have done what with.
There are two carbon trading exchanges complete with screen jockeys
selling futures and derivatives in carbon credit.
Don't we ever learn ?