Word: howard
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...were just about the economy, mate, then Australian Prime Minister John Howard would win his country's upcoming election in a walkover. GDP has grown in each of Howard's 11 years in office, and unemployment is at a 33-year low. Yet barring a last-minute shift before polls open on Nov. 24, Howard will be replaced in Canberra, the nation's capital, by Kevin Rudd, leader of the opposition Labor Party--and climate change will be one of the central reasons...
...ratify the Kyoto Protocol, thereby committing the nation to reducing its greenhouse-gas emissions. Labor leader Kevin Rudd calls climate change "the moral challenge of our generation" and says he will sign on to Kyoto "without delay" if his 10-point poll lead translates to victory. Prime Minister John Howard has refused to ratify Kyoto because it limits the emissions only of developed nations. For him the top election issue is the economy: "I don't think the world is going to come to an end because of climate change...
...coal-fired power stations - and that share is shrinking as Chinese and Indian emissions soar. No matter what Canberra does, the effects on the world's climate "are likely to be extremely small," says Australian National University economist Alex Robson, "almost certainly zero." Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull argues, with Howard, that climate change cannot be addressed without coordinated action by all major emitters. But Labor, he says, takes the view that "we must purify ourselves, regardless of how poor it makes us to become pure...
...Both parties are at pains to reassure voters that whatever they do to address climate change, it won't harm the $1 trillion economy that's grown up during Howard's 11-year tenure. For Labor, that priority has meant some less-than-pure-green policies. Rudd stunned many supporters last week when he abruptly embraced Howard's position on a post-Kyoto climate treaty. It would be "an essential prerequisite" for a Labor government's support, Rudd said, that developing nations also make binding commitments to rein in their carbon emissions. Explaining the now-mutual policy, Howard said...
...Green as their hearts may be, for most Australians the environment seems to be a less pressing election issue than the economy or health care. Howard and Rudd are offering voters big tax cuts, and financial help with everything from first-home purchases to children's dentistry. Their rhetorical flourishes differ, but both are staking their political future on the belief that for now, at least, Australians fear storm clouds on the economic horizon more than their absence from the skies...