UK climate targets impossible without individual carbon budgets - 03 Feb 2009 - BusinessGreen

Targets set out in the climate change bill will not be met without the introduction of personal carbon allowances, according to a new report for the The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA).

Climate change adviser Ross Garnaut branded a 'wacko' by AWU president Bill Ludwig | The Australian

THE patriarch of Australia's biggest blue-collar union has launched a stinging assault on the credibility of the Rudd Government's climate change adviser, Ross Garnaut, calling him "wacko".

Australian Workers Union national president Bill Ludwig yesterday poured scorn on Professor Garnaut's proposal that Australians move away from eating cattle and sheep and instead consume kangaroo meat because of environmental benefits.

Speaking to the AWU's national conference on Queensland's Gold Coast, Mr Ludwig also challenged the science of man-made global warming, suggesting it could be caused by volcanoes.

The former shearer and influential figure in Queensland's ALP told conference delegates he was not a climate change sceptic. But he said, nonetheless, that he supported debate on the science behind the theory, before launching into a headlong criticism of Professor Garnaut as author of the Government's white paper on climate change.

The union chief said climate change was described initially as global warming, until evidence proved unequivocally that the planet actually got cooler.

"It's not global warming any more, it's climate change," Mr Ludwig told delegates. "That gets them back in the game. These people are pretty flexible to be relevant in these times."