Australia's major rivers are shrinking and farms are gripped by drought as scientists warn of climate change, but that has not convinced some sceptical politicians to back carbon-trade laws. In a pointer to the difficulty of striking a pact to curb global greenhouse gas emissions at climate talks in Copenhagen, Australia's Parliament is at an impasse over a scheme to slash carbon emissions blamed for global warming.

The main conservative opposition is split over whether to support the laws in an obstructive Upper House of Parliament.

"For the extreme left it has provided the opportunity to do what they've always wanted to do, to sort of de-industrialise the Western world," Nick Minchin recently told Australian television.

"The collapse of communism was a disaster for the left. They embraced environmentalism as their new religion," Mr Minchin said, sparking a blizzard of controversy. Australia is already witnessing the effects of climate change, scientists say, with farmlands in the grip of a decades-long drought, drying riverbeds, record heatwaves and warnings of catastrophic bushfires as well as freak flash flooding in the north.