With the election of a new Prime Minister on the weekend, Australia has gone from a country opposed to taking action on climate change to a country committed to cutting emissions.

Wow. Sometimes change really does happen overnight.

Shortly after winning the Australian election, Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd announced that Australia will ratify the Kyoto Protocol and that he will go to the UN climate summit in Bali next week.

His timing couldn't be better. Having Australia on board in Bali will help boost the international fight against global warming. Australia's decision to ratify Kyoto now leaves the U.S. as the only industrialized country in the world not to have signed the agreement.

It also further isolates Canada, which is the only country that has ratified the Kyoto Protocol but refused to honour its commitments.

Mr. Rudd's win marks a pretty dramatic shift for Australia. Former prime minister John Howard refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol or take any action to cut the country's greenhouse gas emissions. It was clearly a position not shared by the majority of Australia's citizens, who voted his government out of power on Saturday.

Maybe it will help inspire Canada to start taking climate change seriously. Who knows? Sometimes change really does happen overnight.