The fourth and last Principal Voices roundtable of 2006-7 took place in Sydney on February 28, discussing how to tackle climate change through fiscal incentives such as carbon trading.

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Could business - more specifically the fundamental process of making a profit through buying and selling a commodity - prove a way to reduce emissions of the so-called greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide that scientists believe cause global warming?

That was the subject of the final Principal Voices round table event of the 2006-7 series, at Jones Bay Wharf in the Pyrmont district of Sydney, Australia.

The four panellists were all world-renowned experts in areas connected to the innovative process of setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions for countries and companies, which can then sell any reductions beyond their limit or else buy up others' surpluses to make up a shortfall.

This process, known as carbon trading, is good for the planet but motivated by more than pure altruism, noted one panelist, James Cameron, vice chairman of Climate Change Capital, a London-based investment bank which specializes in low carbon emission businesses

"These are people who have strategic interests in the marketplace, and are also trying to invest to reduce risk over time," he told the invited audience.

"But, they're not doing this for charity, for good will, for environmental purposes. They're doing this for commercial returns. They're absorbing risk and they expect returns that are commensurate for that risk."

One such carbon trading system is operated by the U.S.-based Chicago Climate Exchange, the executive vice president of which, Paula DiPerna, was another speaker.

Although the U.S. had not signed the Kyoto Protocol, the main international treaty on capping greenhouse gas emissions, DiPerna - who spoke via video link from the United States, in part, she said, to save on emissions -- explained how opinions were changing in the country.

"From the political point of view, what we're looking for is a very visionary approach to this," she said.

"I think you'll see a movement towards enforcement in the United States, I hope within my lifetime, but I would bet even within the next couple of years."

Although the progress of climate change remained uncertain, said Martijn Wilder, a climate change and emissions trading expert with global law giant Baker & McKenzie, the potential risks were so huge that action had to be taken.

A recent report by the hundreds of scientists from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned of possibly catastrophic global consequences if climate change was unchecked, he noted.

"Even if you take the IPCC, the IPCC at the moment has different scenarios [for the future effects of emissions], if you take their most extreme scenario, you could say there is a one in 10 chance of that happening," he said.

"How many people in this room will take a one in 10 chance? If you were getting on a jumbo in New York today to fly back to Sydney and you were told that 50 of the 500 passengers were likely to be shot, would you take that risk?"

The fourth panelist, Warwick McKibbin, professor of international economics at the Australian National University in Canberra, spoke of the need for governments to provide a long-term institutional framework for carbon trading to operate within.

"We need 2050, 2070 targets. They're not priced into any of these markets at the moment. They should be. That's the flaw in the Kyoto Protocol, the black hole after 2012," he said, adding that there was one dominating factor that had to be considered - money.

"Underlying everything has to be the hip pocket. If people have to pay more for something carbon intensive, they will have the incentive to change their behavior. It all comes back to why you want a carbon price in the world economy."