As Australia pushes ever onward in our mad pursuit of Green salvation, the big boys and girls are thinking that the costs are too high.

Andrew Bolt reports:

The Gillard Government steams ahead, while even the European Union considers retreat:

The European Union is for the first time clearly questioning whether it should press ahead with long-term plans to cut greenhouse-gas emissions if other countries don’t follow suit, in what could herald a significant policy shift for a region that has been at the forefront of advocating action to combat climate change. The document is unambiguous about the risks if Europe acts alone. “It has to be seen clearly that there are risks associated to unilateral EU action,” the commission says in its draft. “There is a trade-off between climate-change policies and competitiveness. Europe cannot act alone in an effort to achieve global decarbonization,” the paper says.

Japan also gets cold feet:

Japan is reconsidering plans to cut carbon-dioxide emissions by 25% by 2020 due to a rethinking of its energy future, and the country is worried that it is spending too much on carbon-credit programs, a senior government official said on Wednesday. “Japan’s wealth has been draining out” due to buying carbon credits from East European countries and China, Mr. Nobutani said. METI estimates Japan has paid as much as ¥800 billion ($10.4 billion) to buy 400 million metric tons of carbon credits.

We already know that the U.S. isn't likely to enact a national carbon emissions trading scheme any time soon and China is laughing all the way to the bank as it ramps up its own production of solar panels and wind turbines to the West.

Which just leaves the economic powerhouse nations of Australia and New Zealand ploughing onwards into the brave new world of Green Nirvana.