Hawaii Reporter: World Retreats from Energy Alarmism

While Washington Squabbles, Rest of the World Steps back from Global Warming Extremism

Support for Australian government's climate change policy falls

A survey of Australians has found there's been a slump in public support for the Australian government's climate change policy.

A poll has found that 28 per cent of Australians think Labor is the party best able to handle climate change, compared to 43 per cent just after the election.

Very mixed signals from New Zealand PM Helen Clark

Given that our contribution to global greenhouse gases is only 0.02 per cent what modification do you intend to make to the emissions trading scheme that will mitigate the financial stress on families and the economy already burdened with the adverse consequences of the global recession.
Bryan Helm, Porirua

[Helen Clark:] As part of the package round the ETS there is support for households in the transition to ETS with power bills so that's very very specific support.

The second point to make is that if New Zealand does nothing about its greenhouse gases then we stand to have significant problems in our international markets.

In my position I've been on television in the United Kingdom, in the media in the United Kingdom fighting for us to be able to sell our goods to the British because our competitors in high value markets are trading on "buy local" and "don't buy from New Zealand" with all the carbon footprint of bringing food around the world.

We are having to fight for the future of our travel industry as people say you shouldn't fly long haul, think of the carbon footprint, think of the greenhouse gases.

What we are doing is two things. We are positioning New Zealand so that we do play our part in fighting climate change and New Zealand does like to be part of the solution to international problems, even if we are only a small contributor to it. We like to play our part,

Secondly it's a smart thing to do for the economy because if we don't go down this road we stand economically to be the big losers because of losing our brand as being clean and green and 100 per cent pure. Instead we've become the dirty greenhouse gas polluting people which you wouldn't want to buy so if environmental integrity is important to consumers we have to offer that.

She sounds quite concerned about appearing "green", but she doesn't sound very concerned about the alleged dangers of CO2.