Australian Senate votes down emission trading schemeThe Australian Senate The Senate is the upper of the two houses of the Parliament of Australia. The lower house is known as the House of Representatives. Origins and role The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act of 1900 established the Senate as part of the new system of dominion on Thursday rejected an emissions trading Emissions trading (or cap and trade) is an administrative approach used to control pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants. scheme that aims to cut carbon pollution by up to 25 percent over the next decade, paving the way for a possible early election. The conservative opposition joined forces with the Greens and independent senators to vote down the planned scheme 42 votes to 30. Climate Change Minister Penny Wong Penelope Ying-yen "Penny" Wong (Chinese: 黃英賢; Pinyin: Huáng Yīngxián, born November 5, 1968), Australian politician, has been an Australian Labor Party member of the Australian condemned con·demn tr.v. con·demned, con·demn·ing, con·demns 1. To express strong disapproval of: condemned the needless waste of food. 2. the decision, accusing the opposition of fear-mongering about the impact of the proposed scheme, which the government wants finalised before UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December. "It's not smart to pretend this won't leave us isolated from the rest of the world, and it's not smart to undermine our transition to a low-carbon economy A low-carbon economy is an economy in which carbon dioxide emissions from the use of carbon based fuels (coal, oil and gas) are freezed and significantly reduced.[1]. ," she told the Senate. "This bill may be going down today but this is not the end." The government's scheme proposes cutting emissions by between five and 25 percent by 2020, with the higher figure dependent on the rest of the world adopting "ambitious" emissions reductions targets in Copenhagen. The Greens oppose the plan because they say the five percent target that would be adopted if the Copenhagen talks fail is too low. The vote could have major political implications because if the Labor Party reintroduces its plan after three months and the Senate again rejects it, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd  Editing of this page by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled due to vandalism. could call an early election.
No election is due until late next year but analysts say Rudd may be tempted to opt for an early poll as his government is riding high in opinion surveys. Wong said the government would continue to push for its plan to be adopted before the UN talks. "We will bring this bill back before the end of the year because if we don't ... the message to Copenhagen would be that, once again, Australia is going backwards on climate change," she said. Rudd, who won office in 2007 on a strongly green platform, has described climate change as "the greatest moral challenge of our generation" for Australia, which is the grip of the worst drought drought, abnormally long period of insufficient rainfall. Drought cannot be defined in terms of inches of rainfall or number of days without rain, since it is determined by such variable factors as the distribution in time and area of precipitation during and before in a century. His government does not have a majority in the Senate, or upper house, where independents hold the balance of power. 
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