Australia carbon cuts hit by opposition revolt

Australia's bid to pledge carbon cuts ahead of next month's global climate talks was in serious doubt Friday as an opposition revolt over the legislation threatened to trigger snap polls.

As the government set a 3:45 pm (0445 GMT) deadline for its carbon-trading scheme to be approved by the Senate, opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull was facing a frontbench walkout and a second leadership challenge in three days.

"I will not take a backward step. There is too much at stake. It's not just the credibility of the party," a defiant Turnbull told the Seven Network.

Failure to pass the cuts, aimed at slashing emissions by up to 25 percent of 2000 levels by 2020, would be deeply embarrassing for pro-green Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who will be a "friend of the chair" at the Copenhagen UN summit.

But it would also give the government the power to call a "double dissolution" election after the Senate, which rejected the bills in August, snubbed them for a second time.

Deputy Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said the upper house had until Friday afternoon to pass the laws, which were heavily amended to offer generous concessions to industry and farmers.

"We have said this is a deal for this week," Combet said.

"If that time comes around and the legislation has not been dealt with, it is a clear indication that the extremists and conspiracy theorists... have got the upper hand," he added.

The opposition Liberal Party's Senate leader Nick Minchin said there appeared little hope that debate on the more than 200 amendments could be completed on Friday, which is parliament's last scheduled day of the year.

Rudd promised to clean up policies which have made Australia the developed world's worst per capita polluter when he was elected in late 2007. Shortly afterwards, he ratified the Kyoto Protocol.

The world's biggest polluters, China and the United States, this week put forward their targets, with US President Barack Obama committing to carbon cuts of 17 percent by 2020 and promising to attend the December 7-18 summit.

Meanwhile China vowed to cut carbon intensity, measured per unit of GDP, by 40-to-45 percent from 2005 levels within a decade, putting its first-ever emissions targets on the table.

Greens party leader Bob Brown said Australia would appear "recalcitrant and in the hands of the big coal corporations and the polluters" were it to arrive in Copenhagen empty-handed.

John Connor, head of the bipartisan Climate Institute think-tank, said it would send a "disappointing signal that we aren't being mature and responsible about facing up to the challenge of climate".

"It's not going to be a deal-breaker for Copenhagen if Australia doesn't get (its emissions laws) through but we are walking on eggshells of fragile trust and momentum in these talks," Connor told AFP.

The Copenhagen talks, under the 192-nation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, aim to create a successor to Kyoto by crafting a post-2012 pact for curbing the heat-trapping gases that drive global warming.

Scientists say emissions by industrialised nations must fall by 25-40 percent by 2020 over 1990 levels to limit warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), a threshold widely adopted as safe.

The EU has already vowed to reduce its emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels before 2020, raising the target to 30 percent in the event of an international agreement on the issue, while Japan has offered 25 percent.

Australia has had six "double dissolution" elections, with the last coming in 1987. Turnbull, who survived a no-confidence vote Wednesday, warned a "climate-change do-nothing" opposition would face a landslide defeat.