Business pleads for united approach to climate change -

BUSINESS and environmental leaders have expressed frustration at the lack of co-operation between the federal and state governments over a national response to climate change.
The reaction follows yesterday's launch of a proposal by the states to make big power plants pay for permission to pump heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere under a national emissions-trading scheme, which could start by 2010.
Prime Minister John Howard and senior Federal Government ministers immediately attacked the idea as economically irresponsible because it would increase electricity prices.
Federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane said the proposal showed the Victorian and NSW governments were "controlled by anti-growth interests".
Reaction among industry and environment groups to the states' proposed national emissions-trading scheme — which would put a limit on Australia's greenhouse emissions from power generation and set up a market allowing companies to buy and sell permits to emit the gases — varied wildly.
Critics included the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which dubbed it ill-conceived and economically dangerous, as well as Friends of the Earth, which said such market-based approaches had been largely responsible for global climate change.
It won praise from the Australian Conservation Foundation and some international business and legal firms such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and Baker and McKenzie, which are both involved with global emissions-trading markets.
But nearly all agreed that they were tired of political point-scoring between federal and state governments.
"The industry appreciates that all governments in Australia wish to make a positive contribution to the greenhouse gas challenge that we face, but we're dreadfully concerned now that what we're seeing is a range of expensive measures that are simply growing by the day," Energy Supply Association chief executive Brad Page said. "What we really need is a single national policy."
With TIM COLEBATCH