http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/turnbull-to-cross-the-floor-on-climate-20100127-my9e.html

Former opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull plans to defy his party and cross the floor of parliament over climate change next week.

And he may not be the only Liberal MP to revolt, potentially launching another round of the climate wars which have twice ripped the party apart.

Mr Turnbull's act of dissent comes as the government seeks to jog along troubled international climate talks by formally committing to cut greenhouse gas emissions by five to 25 per cent.

Mr Turnbull was deposed as Liberal leader late last year because he wanted to amend and pass the government's emissions trading scheme (ETS).

His replacement, Tony Abbott, led the party in voting down the ETS and plans to do so again next week. Mr Turnbull, who has criticised the new party regime, isn't going quietly.

"If the government does as they have said they will, and re-introduces the bill with the amendments agreed to by the coalition in late November, then I will vote for it," Mr Turnbull said in a statement to AAP.

The government says it plans to introduce the ETS with Mr Turnbull's negotiations.

Climate change was one of a number of key issues that lost Brendan Nelson the party leadership to Malcolm Turnbull.

Liberal divisions remain over whether an ETS is a good idea. Another lower house Liberal MP has confirmed to AAP he was considering voting for the ETS next week.

Two Liberal senators, Judith Troeth and Sue Boyce, crossed the floor on the issue last year.

Dissent could weaken Mr Abbott's central argument that Australia does not need an ETS.

Meanwhile, federal Climate Change Minister Penny Wong is sticking with Australia's commitment to cut emissions by five to 25 per cent by 2020, resisting pressure to narrow the target range.

She announced the target range would be formally submitted to the UN as part of the troubled post-Copenhagen negotiations.

Australia is one of the first countries in the world to submit its target. Emissions would be cut by a minimum five per cent if there was no global deal, rising to 25 per cent if there was a comprehensive deal.

The cementing of the target indicates the government supports the widely-criticised Copenhagen accord, under which countries are supposed to table their climate plans by January 31.

There was some expectation that countries might tighten up their targets instead of giving very wide ranges.

And green groups say the government should have beefed up the target and ditched the minimum five per cent cut.

Senator Wong indicated she thought the Copenhagen accord could work out.

"They are difficult negotiations and we have to keep pressing," she told reporters at parliament house.

"The Copenhagen accord is capable of delivering a good environmental outcome, but we need to keep working with the nations who are signing up to it."

The submission to the UN appears to make it slightly easier for the government to opt for the minimum five per cent cut, and sets out how this decision would be made.

The federal opposition said it supported the government's target range, but the Greens said Australia should have given a specific target number, so negotiations could move forward.

The troubled UN climate summit at Copenhagen in December was supposed to come up with a pact to tackle climate change, but the resultant accord contained no targets and was seen as a disappointment.

The UN hopes progress can be made this year ahead of another big UN climate summit in Mexico in November.

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It is 5-25%. I believe it is the national total, not the per capita emissions.

Turnbull won't actually make any difference to whether the bill will pass, will he? At least, not directly?

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What makes you think the wilfully stupid do not understand wilful stupidity?

They seem to live and breathe it on this site.

Stupidity at any cost

Soren, it is actually quite easy to cut emissions. Think of it like water consumption. Once you start charging for a product that was previously free, people stop wasting it. There have been several economic studies into the impact on the economy. They all predict the impact to be fairly small.

lol, Denialists have very strange perceptions about what they believe is critical to our futures.
They believe that ignoring Global Warming will not have any deleterious effects on our lives, but believe that reducing our global emmissions will destroy the economies of the world in one fell swoop.
Truly amazing how distorted their priorities are.

These same chaps were the ones screaming for total market deregulation, which was the prime enabler of our most current economic meltdown, but just because they worship money, as an end goal in itself, does not necessaily make them the best judges on how economies, or anything else, especially environmental issues, should be managed.

Not just economic forcasting. In fact they tend to overestimate the economic impact of any such change because humans tend to be more inventive than they can justifiably give us credit for. What the economists are most useful for is telling us the best mechanism for achieving the reduction.

It is also common sense. There are myriad ways to reduce our emissions without a dramatic impact on our standard of living, at each stage of the supply chain.

If you give something away for free, people waste enourmous amounts of it. From that sort of starting point, it is always easy to make dramatic reductions, merely by putting a price on it, without destroying our standard of living. We are certainly nowhere near the stage where we have to make tough choices about our priorities.