The Age calls for urgent and 'potent' climate action

Last month, amid great fanfare and excessive self-congratulations, the representatives of 200 nations at UN-sponsored climate change talks in Paris hailed a general agreement to curb carbon emissions. The covenant, which takes effect in 2020, is intended to limit the potential rise in average global temperatures to "well below 2 degrees" and, ideally, to less than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

The obvious, but unanswered, question is how this will be done in practice, especially here in Australia, where there is neither a carbon emissions trading scheme (a market-based system) nor a punitive system for taxing big polluters.

Read the Editorial in today’s Melbourne Age - “Global warming: Australia urgently needs potent climate policies.”