The Australian political scene is a funny place to be. Funny, if it wasn’t such a serious issue which is being joked about daily in newspaper cartoons. Or dismissed by some as inconvenient, costly and/or crap! We’re talking about climate change policy and primarily an emissions trading scheme to put a price on carbon.

Of course, it will take more than CPRS on its own to reduce Australia’s emissions to a realistic level, but hopefully the Greens are now seeing sense and can bring themselves to support a step in the right direction. We are even seeing former leaders of the Coalition prepared to “cross the floor” and/or come out of the woodwork to show what they support.

This issue goes beyond politics to consider some grand designs for clean air transport, biofuels coming onto their own, energy efficiency moves from a major oil company and renewables making their mark in the US. Two British business voices speak out strongly, and two pieces of research (one from the US and one from Australia) put things in perspective. Australia is reprimanded by one of its own for its clean energy shortcomings and the latest message from the Arctic is as bad as it gets.