Pricing Pollution

Australia has unveiled one of the world’s most ambitious schemes to tackle climate change. From July 2012, Australia’s biggest polluting companies will pay $25 a tonne for their carbon emissions, increasing 2.5 per cent a year until moving to a market-set price in 2015. The plan will create the largest emissions trading scheme after the European Union’s.

Australia generates more carbon pollution per head than any other developed country. But the government faces a furious backlash over the scheme, which a large proportion of the population opposes.