Well a dry run can take a number of forms. One approach is just to require reporting without a carbon price. Another might be to set a fixed price. So there’s a variety of things that could be put in place. We would still say we have to have a definite transition set in place so that after that dry run we move into a freer market regime where we ratchet up the targets. Hopefully by then we’ll know what the rest of the world’s going to do.

Heather, it’s called NGER. The legislation passed in 2007. Any business who hasn’t already prepared for various carbon prices by now really doesn’t deserve to survive. A few cent movements in the Aussie Dollar dwarf the impact of a carbon price for most industries, yet strangely we don’t see the AIG calling for an unfloating of the currency.

Meanwhile in Poznan, Australia is doing its darndest to shift the goalposts on any effective global agreement taking shape by pushing for various landuse and forestry activities to allow us to keep digging up, shipping and burning coal into eternity. Anna Rose, Erwin Jackson and John Hepburn have details. The AYCC also notes that this comes at the expensive of the ratification of Labour’s promise to ratify the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.