Antinuclear

Senator Christina Milne calls on Australia to catch up with international moves to renewable energy

Calls for push toward renewable energy Sky News August 21, 2012 Australian Greens leader Christine Milne says
a ‘big push’ is needed if Australia is to switch entirely to renewable energy and reduce its large carbon footprint.

Senator Milne was responding to a Climate Commission report, released on Tuesday, showing Australia remains the world’s highest per-capita emitter of greenhouse gases. It also found that Australia, as one of 20 ‘carbon heavyweights’, needs to clean up its act. ‘That is a shocking indictment of what Australia is doing not only to people now, but into the future,’ Senator Milne told reporters in Canberra.

In the report, chief climate commissioner Tim Flannery said Australians have been misled by ‘lies’ when it comes to global efforts to tackle climate change but are increasingly less fearful of Labor’s pollution price.

The report also suggested by next year 33 countries and 18 sub-national jurisdictions will have a carbon price in place.

Senator Milne says the carbon tax is a great start, but more is needed to keep up with advances in other countries where the shift has been made from fossil fuels to renewable energies. ‘What we now need is a big push toward 100 per cent renewable energy as quickly as possible,’ she said. Prof Flannery says the report shows Australia is at the beginning of an ‘irreversible shift’. ‘We are moving towards a clean energy future,’ he told ABC Radio.

‘We may not be moving fast enough, but this report confirms to me at least that very clearly the world is moving and it is an irreversible change.’ Almost one in seven people on the planet are living with carbon pricing now, he said…..

August 23, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News