“The heat was turned up on the Howard Government ahead of the official start to the Kyoto Protocol on Wednesday, with protests in London and political pressure at home.
Australia and the US are the only major industrialised countries to have resisted signing the protocol, which will limit greenhouse emissions and introduce an international carbon trading scheme.
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[B[y not ratifying the treaty, Australia would miss out on any global economic opportunities that came with ratification, including carbon trading schemes worth $6 billion.
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Mr Albanese said it concerned him that both the US, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and Australia, the largest emitter per capita, were the only two countries in the developed world not to have ratified the protocol, named after the Japanese city in which the initial climate change conference was held seven years ago. ” (n.c.a)