Oil chief emerges with climate warning

FORMER fossil fuel mogul John Schubert says the nation has reached a “tipping point” on climate change, with overwhelming public acceptance of the problem making it impossible for business and government to ignore it any longer.

The Commonwealth Bank chairman credits the drought, extreme weather disasters such as Hurricane Katrina in the US and Cyclone Larry in northern Queensland, record global temperatures in 2005 and former US President Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth with dispelling any remaining doubts on the threat of climate change.

“I have to say that the Australian community reached a tipping point about September-October, over about a six-week period, when it was just extremely clear that the Australian community bought in that climate change was a real problem,” he told The Australian.

The respected company director, who sits on the board of mining and petroleum giant BHP Billiton, has now joined calls for Australia to implement a carbon-trading scheme. His push comes just one day after BHP’s great rival, Rio Tinto, said the federal Government should move ahead with emissions trading even if major polluters such as China and the US refused to be involved.

The Australian