Too greedy for foresight
The government of Australia's Victoria state has charged the country's federal government with discontinuing crucial research on cutting the emission of greenhouse gases (ghgs) merely on pecuniary grounds. The federal government has withdrawn funding for Cooperative Research Centre for Clean Power from Lignite, Mulgrave, Victoria. The centre was exploring ways to reduce ghg emissions from power stations in Victoria's Latrobe Valley.
Victoria's energy minister Theo Theophanous said the federal government cancelled the funding for the research because it was not market-driven. "So on the one hand they say we won't provide the market driver by agreeing to an emissions trading scheme, or any other scheme which provides a market mechanism, and then they say, well, we won't fund research either because there's no market driver. They're absolutely hypocritical.' Australia opposes the Kyoto Protocol, the global treaty that imposes ghg emission cuts on industrialised nations.