While the Globe and Mail took Canada's Conservative government to task for a weak GHG emissions goal for 2020, Australia's just-announced goal is only marginally better.
Incidentally, both Australia and Canada are in the top five of the world's per-capita emitters of GHGs.
• Greenhouse gas emissions cut by between between 5% and 15% by 2020, from 2000 levels (Note: Canada's target is 20 per cent by 2020 from 2006 levels - BD)
• A scheme to be implemented by 2010 requiring industrial polluters to bid for government licences to emit carbon. It will cover 75% of emissions and include 1,000 of the country's biggest firms, but will initially exclude Australia's drought-battered farmers.
"Without action on climate change, Australia faces a future of parched farms, bleached reefs and empty reservoirs," (Labour Prime Minister Kevin) Rudd told the National Press Club in Canberra, in a speech briefly interrupted by protesters.
"These are hard targets for Australia. If we don't act now, we will be hit hard and fast," said Climate Change Minister Penny Wong.
But Mr Rudd's critics say the new targets fall far short of the drastic cuts some environmentalists have warned are necessary to prevent catastrophic climate change.
The scheme will only aim for a 15% cut in emissions by 2020 if a global agreement on climate change is reached. ...
Mr Rudd has defended his government's scheme, calling it an approach which balances competing economic and environmental demands - he had faced calls from the business community to postpone the carbon trading scheme in light of the global economic downturn.
His government says the new scheme will trim only 0.1% off annual growth in domestic national product from 2010 to 2050, with a one-off increase in inflation of about 1.1%.
You could say that the decision came down to a choice between the environment and the economy," Gary Cox, head of environmental derivatives at global brokers Newedge, told Reuters news agency.
"And at this stage it looks like the economy has won."
The BBC's Nick Bryant made the following observations in a blog posting:
Kevin Rudd received a standing ovation at the international climate change conference in Bali last December, having just signalled a change in Australia's environmental policies with the flourish of his prime ministerial pen: his move to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. A year on, he may well have just lost any pretensions of being in the vanguard of global leadership on climate change after adopting cautious greenhouse emissions targets of cuts between 5% and 15% by 2020.
Trying still to burnish his green credentials, Kevin Rudd claimed in his speech that after eleven years of climate change scepticism, Australia is now part of the solution rather than part of the problem. But some might concur with the Greens leader, Bob Brown, who said: "I think John Howard would be making the same announcement were he at the press club today had he won the last election."
So "a global embarrassment," as the Greens suggest, or a sensible act of environmental protectionism?