"Human beings are fantastically adaptable and will adapt" to this warming period says Tony Howarth. Photo: Nick Moir
HOW political is that. At the very climax of negotiations - about 2.30pm on Thursday, just after sceptical senator Nick Minchin rose to join the parliamentary debate - the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry put out a statement opposing ''unilateral adoption'' of a carbon pollution reduction scheme.
Amid a pitched battle for the centre of the Liberal Party, ACCI's chief executive and former Liberal Party staffer Peter Anderson managed to align the country's biggest business group - representing 350,000 companies and four million employees - with those in the Opposition who would do nothing to address climate change, perhaps ever. In its timing and language, the ACCI statement could not have been better targeted to sink the CPRS, which it described as the ''world's toughest''.
Similar tactics have caused a serious split ...