If Australia continues on its current course, it will produce greenhouse gas emissions 18 percent above 1990 levels by 2010. That flies in the face of current efforts to get industrialised countries, which produce 75 percent of greenhouse gases, to reduce its emissions of these gases. Several reduction formulas have been proposed. The European Union is calling for a 15 percent reduction in greenhouse emissions below 1990 levels by the year 2010. The U.S. calls for sizably lower targets, to return emissions to 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012.
Japan proposes an average five percent reduction by industrialised countries.
Australia argues that individual nations must act according to domestic realities. In its case, reality has to do with its huge dependence on coal exports. Officially, its climate change policy calls for ''fairness and equity'' through ''differentiation of emissions targets''. Senator Warwick Parer, the minister for resources and energy, says Australia is taking an ''effective and credible stance'' on climate change, in the face of ''international rhetoric not yet supported by achievable action plans''. For instance, Australia's science and industry body has estimated that the impact of global warming will see winter rainfall falling by up to 20 percent over most of mainland Australia within the next century.