Laws on Climate Change

Climate change is a politically insurmountable, economically contestible, socially desirable and legally elusive subject which has been the hot subject globally and Australia is no exception to this. It is now scientifically established that that the temperature around the world has literally been rising resulting in the shooting up of the political temperatures for which the political leaders seek refuge in colder climates in the guise of conferences and even summits. However, since evidence on hand suggests that their actions have to go beyond the conferences, the next best thing that they do is to enact legislations with avowed objectives of drastically reducing the impact of it on the physical, biological and human systems.

Australia has also been following the footsteps of the developed countries in tackling the impact of climate changes through legislative measures.

About Climate change Law in Australia:

The Climate Change Law is a set of legal instruments that empowers the Government(s) to work with business and the community to develop, implement and enforce strategies that would go towards reducing the greenhouse emissions and tackle issues arising out of climate change.

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act, 1999 is the key enabling legislation enacted by the Australian Commonwealth Government from where the subordinate legislations emanate with the aims to achieve the key objectives of (a) redacting the emission levels, (b) increasing the renewable electricity generation and (c) increasing the renewable electricity consumption

Types of Climate Change Law in Australia:

Two important types of law are discussed below;

The National Greenhouse Energy Reporting (NGER) Act, 2007 aims at reducing the carbon pollution through prescribing mandatory emission measurement and reporting obligations. By virtue of this Act becoming effective from July, 2008, the registration and the reporting have become mandatory for corporations whose energy production, energy use and greenhouse gas emissions met specific thresholds.

Through the Climate Change and Greenhouse Emission Reduction Act, 2007 of the South Australian Government targets at reducing the greenhouse emissions. In addition, through this legislation, it also aims at achieving a target of 20% of the State's power being generated from the renewable sources by 2014.  With the passing of the Act, the Government has been empowered to negotiate a series of sectoral agreements, both with the small and big industries in order to bring their greenhouses emissions to minimum desirable levels without compromising their growth. Some sensitive industries (e.g. Wine) would come under the governmental radar to satisfy the compliance as stipulated by the authorities from time to time.

An Example of how the law is applied:

The Carbon Emissions trading scheme envisaged under the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill (CPRS), 2009 is a market based scheme that allows parties to buy and sell permits for emissions or credits for reductions in emission of some pollutants. The organisations that reduce their emissions below the threshold are entitled to collect credits that they can then sell  to those organisations that use a higher than the legislatively  prescribed level of carbon emissions. It in short is an example of creating a free market trading environment with a social objective incorporated in it through a legislative framework.

While the economic and societal impacts of climate changes are beyond the purview of this article, it makes an attempt to conclude it by looking at the levels of knowledge on the business houses by quoting a survey results from a study carried out by the Australian Institute of Management.[1]

This survey was specifically conducted among a chosen target group of 250 top level managers including CEOs from small to large organisations spread over a spectrum of industries in order to determine their knowledge of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

It is rather astonishing and somewhat concerning to note that over 80% of the respondents had no knowledge of the ETS. Within those who had a little knowledge, larger organisations slightly fared better than their smaller counterparts. The sources of the knowledge of who were indeed aware of the ETS were news reports, mass media and industry associations. Unfortunately, the survey does not mention anything about the influence of internet in this regard.

In general, there appears to be an appreciation of the social objective behind the introduction of the scheme. This may influence voluntary compliance by their becoming more environmentally accountable.

However, the fact that a majority of them were not even aware of the likely time (2010) it is slotted to come into effect indicates toward the fact that the Government has not taken adequate measures to see through the schemes into a vast majority of the business streams. If this article plays even a marginal role in the promotion of the socially empowered climate law, it would have considered itself of achieving moderate success

[1] For further details please visit [PDF] The Introduction of Australia's Emissions Trading Scheme <http://aim.com.au/research/AIM%20Emissions%20Trading%20Scheme%20Survey.pdf>).