The federal government has blamed Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and problems in the Senate for the failure of its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), now shelved to 2012.
The Climate Institute's chief John Connor said the move would only mean more extreme measures, and greater expense, in the future.
"The Greens have made perfect the enemy of the good, and Tony Abbott and those in the Coalition that have frankly succumbed to the scaremongering about this are going to be the ones responsible for ... the extra costs of delay," Mr Connor said.
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"And, of course, the government could have taken other paths to bring about a faster introduction."
Mr Connor said the 2012 timeframe was illogical.
"There's certainly no logic that matches the global talks which could conclude a global agreement at the end of 2011 ... perhaps even in early 2012.
"Importantly, we should have such a scheme up, and clarity around targets to help us drive into those global climate talks."
Earlier Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said the PM put the ETS and its 'great big new tax' in his back pocket' only to bring it back after the election.
Campaigning in the seat of Forde, south of Brisbane, Mr Abbott said delaying the ETS until at least 2013 was a ruse. "Mr Rudd is back-pedalling on his ETS. He's trying to hide it, he's changed his tactic, but he hasn't changed his mind," Mr Abbott told reporters.
He said an ETS would mean a 25 per cent jump in electricity prices, supermarket price hikes of up to five per cent, 126,000 jobs lost in regional Australia, and the closure of 12 major coal mines. Abbott said the elderly residents are most exposed to an ETS because many are on fixed incomes.
"That is just the beginning," he said. "It will cascade through the economy, it will get bigger over time, and that will mean the economic burdens just grow. "The fact is if you want to avoid an ETS, if you want to escape the big new tax that Mr Rudd is planning for you, there's only one way to do it and that is to vote for the coalition at the next election."
Mr Abbott said it was not the federal government's stimulus spending that had saved Australia from going into recession, but the reforms introduced by previous governments.
"What Mr Rudd has done by rolling back those reforms is actually expose us to the next recession, and he has mortgaged the future through a spending spree which owes much more to Mr Rudd's political interests than it does to any concerns of economic management," Mr Abbott said.
Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said that businesses that have spent millions preparing for an emissions trading scheme should blame Tony Abbott for its sudden delay.
The ETS has been postponed until at least 2013 in a reversal of the federal government's past enthusiasm to push it through the Senate.
Ms Gillard says that the opposition leader shares the blame in the ETS delay and he should hear from businesses that have now been impacted by the government's decision.
"They ought to pick up the phone and ring Tony Abbott," she told reporters in Melbourne on Wednesday. "Tony Abbott walked away from it, so it's Tony Abbott's conduct that has cost business the certainty it seeks."
Ms Gillard says voters can remain confident that her party will act on climate change. Labor believes in climate change while the Liberals remain a party with sceptics, she said.
