PRESSURE is building on Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull to clarify his position on emissions trading after the US lower house passed a historic bill to slash carbon dioxide emissions.
Climate Change Minister Penny Wong hailed the passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act through the US House of Representatives late Friday night as an "extraordinarily important and historic step".
"This is the first time the world's largest economy has ever determined through any of its houses of parliament that it would reduce its emissions," Senator Wong told The Sunday Age.
"Remember where they were with Kyoto … to pass something like this, which is a reduction on 1990 levels and a reduction on 2005 levels, is an extraordinarily positive step."
Under the narrowly passed bill, which will still need to get through the US Senate if it is to become law, American emissions would be cut 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020 and by 83 per cent by 2050. The bill includes an emissions trading scheme, significant support for the renewable energy sector and big concessions for industries facing foreign competition.
US President Barack Obama said it amounted to a "victory of the future over the past" after decades of talk rather than action.
"The American people are demanding that we abandon the failed policies and politics of the past, that we no longer accept inaction, that we face up to the changes of our time," he said.
In Australia, the Senate last week deferred a vote on the Rudd Government's carbon pollution reduction scheme until August, when it is likely to be defeated.
Mr Turnbull has endorsed Labor's target to cut emissions by up to 25 per cent by 2020, depending on international agreements.
But faced with disunity in his own ranks about threat levels from global warming, Mr Turnbull has said his party will not clarify whether it will support Labor's legislation until after the US position is finalised and Copenhagen global climate talks are concluded in December.
Opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt welcomed passage of the US bill, saying it was a good outcome for the world, giving "the best possible chance of a comprehensive global agreement and … good international targets".
But he suggested the Coalition would still not sign any "blank cheques", and the US legislation confirmed that it would be wrong to press ahead in the absence of an international agreement.
"Now the US is set to become the international standard," Mr Hunt said. "The EU will almost certainly modify its system, Canada will base its system on the US, Japan may well move in line with the US. So, essentially for Australia to have a system which doesn't have a level playing field with the US means that we would export emissions and export jobs."
But Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce, an outspoken critic of the Government's climate change legislation, suggested he would be unlikely to vote in favour of Labor's scheme in its current form under any circumstances. "The Rudd-Wong bill is an economic disaster waiting to receive royal assent."
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown late last week urged world leaders to work towards an international agreement to ensure global emissions peak no later than 2020. He called for the creation of a functioning international carbon market by 2015 and a $US100 billion ($A124 billion) fund to help poor nations adapt.
The passage of the US bill and Mr Brown's comments are likely to raise the stakes at the next international climate meeting between leaders of the world's 17 biggest economies in Italy next month.
Mr Rudd will attend the meeting.
Senator Wong said she believed Mr Turnbull's position was increasingly untenable. "Other nations, including the US, are taking action. Malcolm Turnbull is determined to be a roadblock against this."
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