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IF you were going to have a serious high-level discussion about, say, improving science teaching in schools, then who would you invite to chair the meeting?

How about an astrologer? Perhaps a purveyor of crystal healing would be a good choice? Maybe a creationist, a fortune teller or a spiritual healer?

Well of course not. This would be ridiculous. But just hold that thought for a minute.

A few days ago, the Commonwealth Business Council brought its high-level bi-annual forum –hosted in Perth, Western Australia – to a close.

The CBC boasts membership from 54 countries, across five continents with more than 100 member companies. Among its goals, the CBC aims to "provide leadership in increasing international trade" and to promote "good governance and corporate social responsibility".

Among those in attendance at the CBC forum were the Australian Prime Minister, senior Australian cabinet members, ministers from South Africa, the UK, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Rawanda and the Caribbean.

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THEY paid millions of dollars for adverts on television, in newspapers and online. They flew in climate change deniers from across the globe. They held rallies, engaged prominent right-wing media personalities, threatened scientists and turned the cold non-partisan findings of peer-reviewed science into some kind of blood sport.

But despite what was surely the dirtiest and most dishonest campaign ever waged before the Australian public, from next July major industrial emitters of greenhouse gases (about 500 of them) will have to pay $23 for every tonne of their pollution under laws passed earlier today.

The torrent of self-interest, archaic so-called "free-market" ideology and unmitigated greenhouse gas pollution, will give way to modest payments for the right to continue to pollute, while placing billions into funds to finance clean energy projects.

Away from the propaganda, the bare facts read like this. The laws now pass to the Senate for a vote in early November.

The previous Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme legislation also got this far but was voted down twice in 2009 before it was deferred permanently by then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

This time though, the Greens who helped forge the bills which make up the Clean Energy Future package hold the balance of power in the upper house. Barring something extraordinary, which noone - not even the Opposition - is able to envisage, the laws will pass.

From 1 July 2012, Australia's largest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions will have to pay a fixed price of $23 per tonne of pollution produced here. The price will rise to $25.40 per tonne in 2014/15. From 1 July 2015, an emissions trading scheme will be introduced where the government releases a fixed number of permits which major emitters will need to purchase through auctions. In the early stages, major industries will be given permits for free, but the assistance gets scaled back.  The number of permits released by the government will be capped to enable Australia to cut its emissions by five per cent by 2020, based on 2000 levels.

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The Center for Media and Democracy PR Watch reports that an Australian corporate funded think tank, the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) is not renewing the contract for Jennifer Marohasy, one of its Senior Fellows and a global warming skeptic.

The news is actually somewhat surprising. IPA is a right-wing, corporate funded think tank with close ties to the Liberal Party of Australia (which is actually on the political right). Its Executive Director John Roskam is a former Howard government staffer and one of the organization’s key positions is to refute the science on issues such as climate change. A position that Marohasy promoted with vigor during her six-year tenure at IPA, though not all of her attempts to spread global warming denial came to fruition.

“I had great hopes for the planned collaboration between the IPA and University of Queensland on evidence-based environmentalism but the University proved too timid and conservative – at least for me.” - JenniferMarohasy.com

Marohasy has also left her position as Executive at the Orwellian named Australian Environment Foundation (AEF), which was established to help protect timber interests in Australia and founded by the IPA. The former Executive Director of the IPA described the AEF as “pro-biotechnology, pro-nuclear power, pro-modern farming, pro-economic growth, pro-business and pro-environment.” That last pro might be questionable.

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Sources are telling DeSmog that on Dec. 6th a last and final attack on climate change science and the media will be mounted by Sen. James Inhofe, outgoing chair of the Envrionment and Public Works Committee .

For his final committee comedy act, Inhofe has proposed an interesting line-up of witnesses, all of them, unsuprisingly, close to the fossil fuel industry-backed war on science. First up will be Dr. Bob Carter an Australian who's affiliations include the fossil fuel industry friendly (and funded) Institute of Public Affairs. Second up is David Deming, an "adjunct scholar" for the National Centre for Policy Analysis…