Australia appears to be "leading the race" on climate change action in a way that could hurt resource companies competing internationally, a key mining group says.
Chamber of Minerals and Energy (CME) Western Australia Chief Executive Reg Howard-Smith said on Tuesday that the chamber's issue was not so much the science of climate change but the political response and solution.
That created "a significant amount of angst," he told reporters in Perth after CME hosted a breakfast forum with Chief Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery and three other commissioners.
Mr Howard-Smith took issue with the federal government bringing in a carbon tax when other countries were not imposing such imposts on business.
He said CME's position had always been that a solution needed to be market-based, protect internationally competitive industries and have an international response.
"We have grave concerns, not just that Australia appears to be leading the race in many respects, but our major competitors are often not the major economies of the world."
Mr Howard-Smith said it was countries like Brazil and in parts of Asia and Africa that many Australian resource companies competed with.
"They too must change, because what we clearly require is a level playing field.
"We can't rest on our laurels, we are in a very competitive world, so let's not disadvantage ourselves."
Mr Howard-Smith said nations acting in a piecemeal way to address climate change was not the most effective solution.
"That doesn't make sense when we're such an export-oriented economy."
In response, Professor Flannery said brokering an international agreement was very difficult.
"We'd all love the perfect solution, which would be a global top-down agreement that equalised everything," he told reporters.
"The way we're moving towards that is by individual nations taking action and then starting to equalise as we go on."
Prof Flannery said it was currently a period of transition and that's why structural adjustment, compensation for trade-exposed industries and other measures were happening.
"But at the end of the day as nations build a more common view to this, those sorts of things won't be needed any more."
Prof Flannery said there was still widespread support for action on climate change among the Australian public but the political debate about what mechanism was the correct solution had divided the community.
"The only way in a democracy that a country can come to terms with these issues is to have a well-educated populace, otherwise you keep on making the wrong decisions."
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