Climate change has proved to be a major issue in Australia in recent years. For instance, many of Australians appears to be evidently losing their fresh water due to persistent drought. However, at the same time, Australia is the highest releaser of greenhouse gases per capita in the developed world (Climate Action Network Australia, 2008). A particular system, Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, used to reduce the emissions of pollutants, was released by the federal government. The scheme is expected to tackle the environmental and economic problems of global warming in Australia, although it received lots of criticism.
Critics argue, we should wait for other countries to proceed, that Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme will do little to reduce the effects of global warming on Australia overall, as is a global problem requiring cooperative global solution (Bowen, 2008). They even tend to state that we cannot make sure if climate change will cause some damages, as noted by Bowen (2008).
However, in fact, Australia is one of the major coal-exporting countries, burning with setting free Carbon Dioxide. Whether the scheme will resolve the global problem is very unlikely as waiting for others. That is, if human conflicts cannot be resolved at home, then they are unlikely to be resolved at the international level. Australia also faces the most risk from global warming according to the Stern’s Report (Stern, 2006). The partially reason are its agriculture and long coastline. By rising temperature, it will cause sea levels rising as well. It is expected that sea level would rise of between 20 and 90 centimeters during the 21st century, partly due to the thawy ice caps. Also, higher temperature will reduce the amount of rainfall, in additional of more drought areas. As a result, these drought areas could be at high fire risk. As an example, the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) predicts that if the temperature rises of between 2...