I believe climate change deniers need to have their head examined, but I don't think we (Australia) should do anything about trying to fix it. We're responsible for 1.3% of global emissions. A 20% reduction in emissions would only cut world emissions by 0.26%. Enforcing a tax on polluters would make things even harder for an already struggling resources sector. We'd be harming ourselves for no benefit whatsoever.
I don't like the 'well we're only a small contributor, why should we do anything?' argument. If everyone said that we'd never get anywhere.
What I do agree with is that our token efforts will achieve nothing in terms of saving the planet. We should as a society use less energy, stop polluting our waterways etc. because it's just the right thing to do.
We're at 1.3% of total global emissions, or 14th out of all nations. We're about 4 times our share relative to population. Shame, straya, shame. If everyone lived like we do, well my childhood dream of having a hills property by the sea would probably be reality.
The problem is - we, and everyone else - are full of shit. Our prosperity isn't only dependent on being resource consumers, it's dependent on others doing the same and more importantly striving to do the same. Our CO2 emissions are 10-15 times more per capita than India and 2-3 times more than China. Their collective output is 30 times more than ours. From 2000 today China's CO2 emissions have nearly tripled. Yep, tripled. That's called a nation of over a billion people joining the developed world, or as we call it here a boom period for our economy. But as long as we buy imported solar panels and drive Prius' we're saving the planet. The fact that we export multiples of the amount of coal we burn each year to countries that are building coal power stations... that's good for our economy so we won' talk about that. And now China has cooled India is the new sleeping giant ready to industrialise. And buy all our coal, iron ore etc.
Besides, there is no point having targets for emissions when we don't have targets for population anyway.