Bathurst Community Climate Action Network

Well, it looks like Kevin Rudd has been scared off his own Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS). The scheme, once Labor's flagship policy, has been scrapped for now, overtaken by a heavy dose of Realpolitik. The scrapping of the scheme will save the government a couple of billion and it will stop the Coalition running a scare campaign over rising electricity prices and job losses.

The CPRS, in its most recent incarnation, was enormously flawed, and many environmentalists felt we'd be better of with nothing than with a scheme that would lock in massive compensation for carbon emitters. However, by planning for a national scheme to tackle climate change, Australia, the world's worst per-capita emitter, was signalling that it was prepared to take the bull by the horns. Now, the world will be looking on as Rudd turns tail and runs out of the arena.

In scrapping the scheme until at least 2013, Kevin Rudd has announced the government will hold off until it sees what other countries do. The fact is that many other countries – lower per capita emitters than us - are doing a lot. Even China, often considered a barrier to change, is taking dramatic steps.

Greg Walker, the Treasurer of the Bathurst Community Climate Action Network, is now in Kunming, China, for work. As he read the news on ABC Online, he had the China Daily open on his hotel table. In an email home, he noted that the China Daily has "a special back page feature lauding the progress that Shandong Province is making with renewable energy projects including a item about a Sino-German conference on Friday that is focused on new energy and sustainability."

Another report in the China Daily describes how investors around the world are rushing "to pump money into the new energy sector in east China's Shandong province. The province had approved 40 new energy projects by end of March, with a total investment of $2.39 billion, of which $680 million was from abroad…"

By putting it off, we're deciding to take our pain later, rather than earlier. The problem is that the pain – not just for future generations, but for an economy that is slow to adjust to new world realities – will get worse the longer we leave it.