A LEAKED document from Australian prime minister John Howard's office has revealed that Howard, US President George Bush and other leaders of the Asia Paci"c Economic Cooperation (Apec) forum will push only for "aspirational" goals on cutting greenhouse emissions in the next round of UN climate negotiations. The draft declaration follows Bush's calls earlier this year for a new climate change agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which neither the US nor Australia has ratified.

Apec, which is scheduled to meet in Sydney next month, will also back nuclear power as a viable alternative energy source, according to the document.

Environmental groups in Australia have reacted with outrage to the leak.

US FARMERS EARN THEIR CORN

ETHANOL-FIRED corn prices have prompted US grain belt farmers to plant 24% more corn this year than last to cash in on the boom in biofuels. Farmers in the US midwest have planted more acreage than any year since 1944, when American farms were at the peak of wartime production. Global output is following suit and is expected to rise 10% this year.

But such is the demand for cornbased ethanol, that futures prices on the erstwhile foodstuff continue to raise day by day.

Another economic consequence of corn-fever: prices for farmland in major corn-producing states such as Iowa, Nebraska and Illinois are rising by double-digit figures, putting farm acquisition out of reach for young farmers or farmers who rent land just as the market for produce is promising very attractive returns.

THINK TANK IN SURPRISE CARBON TAX U-TURN

THE executive director of the International Policy Network, a London-based libertarian think thank and lobby group, has surprisingly come out in favour of carbon taxes. In an op-ed for the right-leaning Wall Street Journal, Julian Morris advocated a carbon tax as the best way top incentivise technological solutions to climate change. He also said a carbon tax would put an end to the EU's emissions cap and trade system, which has controversially worked to the financial benefit of companies such as Shell, BP and Exxon - effectively creating a set of vested interests where non had existed previously. The move follows the conversion of wellknown Canadian climate-change sceptic Ross McKittrick, who has proposed a temperature-indexed global carbon tax as the fairest basis for making sure polluters pay for actual impacts.