California is now talking about setting up a European-style emissions-trading scheme with north-eastern states.
The trigger was Mr Rudd's decision in late April to defer a planned emissions-trading scheme (ETS) until at least 2013.
Three years later, a market-based emissions-trading scheme will replace a fixed tax.
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Under the European emissions-trading scheme carbon does have a price in Britain, but it is too low to be effective and is hard to increase.
In July 2012 Australia's 500 biggest polluters will start paying a tax on emissions, ahead of an emissions-trading scheme due to start three years later.
And his most cherished reform, an emissions-trading scheme to tackle climate change, is stuck in the upper house of parliament, where his government lacks a majority.
Japanese firms can use the credits to prepare for their country's own looming emissions-trading scheme, and the Japanese government can use them to meet its Kyoto commitments.
The main cause for the slide seems to be his shelving of plans for an emissions-trading scheme to fight climate change, seen as one of his administration's main goals.
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That could be a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system, such as Europe's Emissions-Trading Scheme, which limits how much producers can emit, and lets them buy and sell emissions credits.
But you say that even a moderate carbon tax would not make nuclear power competitive, noting that the price of permits in Europe's emissions-trading scheme implies a social cost of carbon dioxide of euro20 per tonne.
Many of his announcements were reheated (such as bringing aviation into Europe's emissions-trading scheme), modest (the climate-change levy, an industrial tax, will rise with inflation) or so speculative as to be irrelevant (a suggestion that the target for carbon cuts might be raised to 80% by 2050 from 60%).
To help it do so, it is just about to launch an internal carbon-emissions trading scheme.
America was heavily involved in the design of the Kyoto protocol, and insisted that it should include the possibility of a market in emissions credits, on the ground that its trading scheme to reduce sulphur-dioxide emissions had been a big success.
Europe's emissions are capped by an emission-trading scheme, but the costs will now rise for everybody.
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To their credit, ministers have pledged to try to get flying included in the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme, a cap-and-trade arrangement for discouraging reliance on carbon.
And it has voluntarily decided to curb emissions of greenhouse gases, and is building an internal carbon-trading scheme.
America has had great success cutting sulphur-dioxide emissions, which are a precursor to acid rain, through a domestic trading scheme that may be a good model for any Kyoto-inspired carbon trading.
In Britain, oil giant BP set up a trading scheme among its own companies in 1998 and in three years reduced emissions by one-fifth.
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