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Australia one of many nations taking action on Climate Change

“Australia is not alone in acting on climate change … in fact Australia is a major player and an emerging leader.”

Australia a major greenhouse player: UN  news.com.au LLOYD JONES AAP October 24, 2012 AUSTRALIA is not in “a lonely desert” as the only nation reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but is an emerging leader in
the field, a key United Nations climate change official says.
Christiana Figeures, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said there was a misconception among many Australians that their nation was acting alone in combating the problem.
“Nothing could be further from reality,” she said in a speech at the
Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney today.
“Every one of Australia’s top trading partners has something already in place.”
Ms Figeures said China had pilot emissions schemes in place in seven
large cities which would go national in five years and it was already
number one in the world in renewable energy.
She said the United States had pledged to have a 17 per cent reduction
in emissions below 2005 levels by 2020 and that was buttressed by
regulations imposed on the power and transport sectors.
The European Union had 40 per cent of their emissions covered by a
carbon trading scheme, South Korea was becoming a leader in green
growth and India, Singapore and other countries had set impressive
reduction targets, Ms Figeures said.
“Australia is not alone in acting on climate change … in fact Australia is a major player and an emerging leader.”
She challenged Australia to sign up to the second phase of the Kyoto
Protocol on climate change, saying it was in the country’s national
interest to do so…..
Australia was a country “blessed with renewable energy capacity” and
had a great opportunity to be a model for both industrialised and
developing countries as to how to a harness such energy, she said.
“The world is looking very closely to see how Australia progresses
with its clean energy policy.”
Ms Figeures said if climate change was allowed to go on unchecked it
could wipe out all the development that had taken place over the past
25 years.
“There’s no plan B because we don’t have a planet B,” she said.  http://www.news.com.au/news/australia-a-major-greenhouse-player-un/story-fnehlez2-1226502488729#ixzz2AKpRqbsV

October 24, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News