Big polluters knew better than to knock on our doors  they knocked on Kevin Rudd's door instead and got a very different reception. Unbeknown to most households, Rudd effectively agreed to write all these cheques and more. His so-called carbon pollution reduction scheme asked the biggest emitting industries to pay for, on average, just one in every five tonnes of their greenhouse pollution  the rest of us would pay for the other four. By 2020, 45 per cent of emissions would be given away free to the worst offenders, maybe more. This makes it mathematically impossible to make deep cuts in greenhouse pollution in Australia, and the Prime Minister's promise of a "blueprint for reducing carbon pollution at home", becomes undeliverable.

The only way of concealing this is to outsource Australia's emission reductions en masse  paying other countries to reduce emissions on our behalf. That's why Rudd's white paper on emissions trading placed no limit whatsoever on how many emission permits and credits generated overseas could be used in place of emission cuts in Australia. One hundred per cent of Australia's emission cuts could be made overseas just as long as outsourcing options are cheap and plentiful. And they will be.

The carbon trade is likely to be dominated by cheap "biocarbon" measures  especially deals in which developing countries pledge not to log rainforests in return for Western polluters getting credit for the carbon emissions prevented. This "reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation" (REDD) could cost as little as

$US1 per tonne of carbon dioxide, and it is plentiful: deforestation accounts for about 20 per cent of global emissions; around three times Australia's annual emissions in PNG and Indonesia alone.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has effectively conceded that because the Government proposes no limit on outsourcing emission cuts, actual greenhouse pollution in Australia might not fall irrespective of what 2020 target Australia adopts. After all, if all the cuts can be outsourced cheaply, what comes out of smokestacks and tailpipes here need not change, whether we have a 5 per cent target or a 40 per cent target. Like our manufacturing, our call centres and so much more, it can all be outsourced to developing countries.