The Australian Conservation Foundation also weighed into the debate,urging the Greens to use their balance of power to back the reform,even without a guarantee that new fossil fuel projects will be blocked.
The safeguard mechanism is designed to impose,for the first time,binding caps on Australia’s 215 biggest polluters – including mines,factories,smelters and processors – to force them to reduce their carbon footprint by a cumulative 205 million tonnes by the end of the decade.