24.4 tonnes
warmair,
wow, that is indeed staggering when you consider Germany's 10 tonnes includes huge winter-heating & other cold winter related emission.
with what does Australia's emission go so high ? It is no secret that Australians are a petrol-head people but 24 tonnes is crazy. are you sure that's correct ? which is our highest polluting industry ? I'm convinced that the large scale desalination plants will become obsolete once sense makes a comeback in Australia. that should reduce emission by a large degree. If only our excess water were harvested & more hydro-power would also reduce emission. If we can explain to a Greenie that a waterfall produces no emission in comparison to a diesel generator or a coal burner then we're half-way to continue regaining sense in Australia. I think we need to let Abbott know & he'll be all ears, excuse the pun.

JOHN HOWARD IS A CLIMATE CHANGE SKEPTIC.

A comprehensive run down of Lord Monckton's strategies to "lock up the climate scientists".....

http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/03/02/lord-monckton-threatens-climate-scientists-again

Nutty?

Yes

Farcical?

Yes

Go "skeptics" - you'll have all the climate scientists dying from laughter (and then you can take over the world...)

: )

JOHN HOWARD IS A CLIMATE CHANGE SKEPTIC.
Mr Opinion,
let's deal with relevance please. Abbott is a new generation unlike goner Rudd.
what people call skeptics are really people who don't get caught up in yuppy hype.
There's no denying that changes are occurring but we can't be certain if our emissions are the actual cause or if they're merely an accelerant to a natural cycle. One thing that is certain is that the Carbon Tax will have no effect on the climatic changes.
The only way to slow down man made impact is to reduce the numbers of man. Let's see how many proponents or denialists we can get on that proposition.

Individual
I have had a closer look at the statistics for emissions just to clear up a few points, emissions are given either as direct CO2 emissions or Co2 equivalent IE all greenhouse gas emissions. The figures I quoted for Australia was 24.4 tones which was the most up to date figure I could find but it was for Co2 equivalent not simply Co2. The equivalent figure for Germany was about 11.5 tonnes per capita.

On Co2 alone the figures for 2008-2012 were Australia 18.02 and Germany 9 tonnes per capita.

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC/countries/1W-AU-DE?display=graph

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/environment/air_greenhouse_emissions.htm

http://www.carbonneutral.com.au/images/stories/Archive/emissionschart1.png

The prime reason for our high emissions are the use of brown coal which has a low heat value and is wet. It is such a poor fuel that it is uneconomic to transport any distance this means that the power station has to be where the mine is but this increases the distance that the electricity has to be sent to the customer thus incurring further loses which have to made up for by burning more fuel.

http://environmentvictoria.org.au/index.php?q=content/problem-brown-coal

In the case of desalination plants I believe that it is was unnecessary for Victoria Sydney and the Gold Coast but I can see no other option was available to Perth or South Australia . I have often wondered why we don't operate desalination plants with the old style windmills (which are basically water pumps) it does not matter if it does not blow for a few days as there is no problem storing the water.

warmair,
irrigation is the most viable & energy efficient & clean option even for WA. Many Kilometres of pipe are no technical obstacle these days. pumping can be achieved by both solar & wind.
The Bradfield scheme was a hundred years ahead of our modern engineers in proposing water form the Great Dividing range being diverted inland. I can see it being looked at again before long as it is the ONLY alternative. Irrigation is the answer to both drought & flooding & climate in general.
Ask anyone who hasn't been indoctrinated by Australian Universities.