Aussies want climate change action and will pay. Or will they?

Apparently, according to a new opinion poll, most Australians want the government to slash our economic wrists by implementing an emissions trading scheme in spite of the fact that they don't know how it will work.

One has to be a little careful of Fairfax Press initiated polls on climate change, as they're in the tank for Big Green.

Most Australians believe we should be pushing ahead with a greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme regardless of whether other countries do the same, according to a poll.

While 77 per cent of Australians are behind Kevin Rudd's drive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, 60 per cent have little or no understanding of how an emissions trading scheme would work, according to the latest Nielsen poll published in Fairfax newspapers on Monday.

Sixty-eight per cent of people said they were prepared to pay more for goods and services if costs increased as a result of the scheme, Fairfax News reported.

Last week, federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson contradicted senior colleagues by saying that Australia should do nothing until other big polluting countries acted, but only 19 per cent of respondents to the poll agreed with this course of action.

The poll of 1,400 voters was taken from Thursday to Saturday.

On Wednesday, the government released its green paper outlining how a domestic emissions trading scheme would work.

On Sunday, it launched a multi-million-dollar "awareness" campaign to explain how an emissions trading scheme would work.

'Most Australians...' and 'Sixty-eight per cent of people said they were prepared to pay more for goods and services...'

You mean these Australians responding to Ninemsn's poll last week?



Once people become aware of the true impact of an emissions trading scheme I'm sure public opinion will turn against it. Not that they'll get the true extent of the cost from the Fairfax Press, ABC or SBS etc.

As Andrew Bolt points out, it's a winner for the Coalition at the next election. Unfortunately, they're currently too feckless to do what's right for the country and prefer to go along with the government in order to neutralise the issue.

(Nothing Follows)