Most Excellent: Aussie Branch Carbonians Collapse

clipped from ace.mu.nu What looked like a sure thing a few weeks ago just got voted down in the Australian Senate. There has been a bunch of drama over this bill, including the ousting of the main opposition leader after he started to go along with PM Rudd's plans to send the Australian economy back to the Stone Age. Now it looks like Rudd and both houses of parliament are in for an early shake-up: Opponents of the cap-and-trade scheme used their numbers in the Senate after a climate change skeptics took control of the opposition leadership on Tuesday. The scheme would have been the biggest outside Europe, covering 75 percent of Australian emissions and starting in July 2011. It would have effectively forced polluters to pay for their emissions, requiring them to purchase emission permits from a carbon market. Senior opposition lawmaker and frontbencher Christopher Pyne said he expected a dissolution of both houses of parliament and an election early in the new year, ahead of polls due around late November.