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Australian Prime Minister John Howard has announced a shift in policy on climate change, promising to set up a carbon trading scheme to cut pollution.

Mr Howard said he would set a target next year for limiting greenhouse gas emissions and also pledged to put in place a carbon trading scheme by 2012.

Australia is one of the worst polluters per head of population in the world.

Despite his new plans, Mr Howard has warned that setting a cap on carbon emissions would hurt the economy.

His announcement comes ahead of a national election later this year, in which Mr Howard will be seeking his fifth consecutive win.

The opposition Labor party, which has a strong lead in the opinion polls, has portrayed the government as dithering and backward-looking on global warming, reports the BBC’s Phil Mercer in Sydney.

Labor has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 60% by 2050. Mr Howard does not plan to reveal his targets until next year, once the economic costs of carbon trading have been fully studied.

“Implementing an emissions trading scheme and setting a long-term goal for reducing emissions will be the most momentous economic decision Australia will take in the next decade,” Mr Howard told an annual meeting of his Liberal Party.

“If we get this wrong it will do enormous damage to the economy, to jobs and to the economic well-being of ordinary Australians, especially low-income households.”

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- Bravo.

- Norway has amassed a fortune of 300 billion dollars over the last decade. Only Saudi Arabia and Russia have larger oil exports. The Scandanavian countries have, in my opinion, been leading by example for a long time in many areas. Now Norway has decided to use the huge clout of their wealth to influence the world by how and where they invest. Bravo, is all I have to say. Bravo.

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Norway Keeps Nest Egg From Some U.S. Companies

OSLO — For a people whose deep national pride is in bestowing the Nobel Peace Prize, Norwegians are developing a reputation for throwing some sharp elbows.

And they are doing so in an unexpected way: by pulling investments out of Wal-Mart and other big companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin for what they say are ethical failings.

Norway has amassed a fortune of more than $300 billion over the last decade, thanks to its profits from oil exports. Yet few countries are more ambivalent about their vast wealth than this modest, socially conscious society of less than five million people.

So rather than managing their monstrous nest egg simply for the best returns, the reluctant billionaires of Norway are using the money to advance an ambitious ethical code they established in 2004 for their oil reserve, known as the Government Pension Fund.

Norway’s investment choices have become a focus of attention in the last nine months over the exclusion of Wal-Mart, the American retailer whose big-box stores do not exist in this pristine country.

Public pension funds on both sides of the Atlantic commonly avoid investing in certain companies on social or ethical grounds. But it is rare for a sovereign state to make such judgments, and rarer still for one to do it in the pointed, public way that Norway has.

Among the first companies to run afoul of Norway’s standards were makers of cluster bombs and nuclear weapons or related components — a list that includes General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman, in addition to Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Then last June, Norway added Wal-Mart Stores to its blacklist, alleging that the retailer was guilty of tolerating child-labor violations by its suppliers in the developing world and obstructing unions at home. The fund sold off more than $400 million worth of Wal-Mart shares.

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- This article is from the NY Times and they insist that folks have an ID and a PW in order to read their stuff. You can get these for free just by signing up. However, recently, a friend of mine suggested the website bugmenot.com as an alternative to having to do these annoying sign ups. Check it out. Thx Bruce S. for the tip.

Federal and state lawmakers have launched a new drive to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, reviving a feminist goal that faltered a quarter-century ago when the measure did not gain the approval of three-quarters of the state legislatures.

The amendment, which came three states short of enactment in 1982, has been introduced in five state legislatures since January. Yesterday, House and Senate Democrats reintroduced the measure under a new name — the Women’s Equality Amendment — and vowed to bring it to a vote in both chambers by the end of the session.

The renewed push to pass the ERA, which passed the House and Senate overwhelmingly in 1972 and was ratified by 35 states before skidding to a halt, highlights liberals’ renewed sense of power since November’s midterm elections. From Capitol Hill to Arkansas, legislators said they are seizing a political opportunity to enshrine women’s rights in the Constitution.

“Elections have consequences, and isn’t it true those consequences are good right now?” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) asked a mostly female crowd yesterday at a news conference, as the audience cheered. “We are turning this country around, bit by bit, to put it in a more progressive direction.”

The amendment consists of 52 words and has one key line: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” That sentence would subject legal claims of gender discrimination to the same strict scrutiny given by courts to allegations of racial discrimination.

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- this just in from New Zealand…

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Australia has adopted what looks to be a sensible way of ensuring that everyone can get access to broadband – the Australian broadband guarantee. It’s aimed at rural users, and includes private citizens and small businesses.

It works like this: if you can’t find a broadband supplier to a reasonable price and quality where you live, you can apply for a subsidised service. Then, one of a pool of ISPs who the government has signed up, will provide service to you at a reasonable price to you and at a quality the government has stipulated, with the government picking up the difference in cost as a subsidy. The government notes that the service may be delivered by satellite or wire depending on what is practical in each case, but the citizen or small business pays the same. The scheme gets going from this April. It sounds simple and should help Australians living in rural areas get a good standard of service, at least as good as those who live in Australian cities do.

The government has allocated A$165m to this, as part of a wider A$2billion investment in broadband. It’s a model New Zealand should be looking at hard, so that people who live outside our cities don’t miss out.

To the original post…

Proponents of clean energy have long seen the oceans as a great hope for the future. Ocean waves carry tremendous power, and could, in theory at least, provide much of the world’s electricity.

But while other sources of renewable energy – such as wind and solar – have been widely adopted in recent years, wave energy has been slow to take off.

But that’s changing. Scottish engineers will soon deploy an offshore “wave farm” in Portugal.

They have also signed a deal to build an even larger farm in Scottish waters.

Click here to see how the wave power system works

Construction of the wave farm in Portugal has been underway for the past year in a busy shipyard in the Portuguese coastal town of Peniche.

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- As most of you will know, New Zealand is one of my favorite countries in the world.   Here’s a piece about the advances women are making in New Zealand in terms of gender equality.

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New Zealand is among the top 10 countries in narrowing the gender gap, says a major new report. But we’re still some way off true equality of the sexes.

The Gender Gap Index 2006, a collaboration between Harvard University, London Business School and World Economics Forum, said New Zealand had the seventh-smallest gap between men and women out of 115 countries.

The index measured gaps in economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment.

Our overall score was 0.714, where 1 represented total equality.

We were particularly strong in political empowerment and education, and had relatively more women in high-skilled professions than any other country.

Predictably, Scandinavian countries dominated the top five, with Sweden coming first with a score of 0.813. The United Kingdom came ninth, Australia 15th and the United States 23rd. No country scored a perfect one.

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