Antinuclear

The Bishop – Julie – Australia’s great defender of the Coal Faith

Will Australia be the great coal defender at Lima climate talks? Guardian,  Graham Readfearn  3 Dec 14,”………whereas in Warsaw the government decided not to send any ministers, this year the Australian delegation will be joined by two – Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Trade Minister Andrew Robb (Robb was shadow minister for Industry and Climate Change for a year in 2008).

While in opposition in 2011, Bishop was striking a denialist tone on climate change science in a column published in Fairfax newspapers.

Bloggers later found that Bishop had likely cut and pasted the material from climate science denial blogs.

Bishop’s sympathy for people who rejected the multiple lines of evidence for human caused climate change was similar to a piece she had written in 2008.

In a mining industry conference speech earlier this year, Robb celebrated the future of brown coal – the dirtiest form of the already dirty fossil fuel.

Robb said brown coal was “a resource that is often demonised, particularly by those who oppose growth and development”.

A few weeks ago Robb also jumped to the defence of Bishop, who had said the Great Barrier Reef was “not in danger” – contradicting the view of her government’s own science agencies.

So what will Bishop, Robb and Australia be looking for in Lima?

In October, Australia laid out its starting position in a document submitted to the UNFCCC secretariat.

In the document, Australia said it wanted all countries to be working on a “common playing field” and that countries must be allowed to take action that would “sustain economic growth”.

The action needed to be “appropriate to their national circumstances and policy choices” and any pledges “must include clear, credible and quantifiable emissions reduction commitments by all” that would “deliver real global outcomes”.

This is the language of multi-lateral climate negotiations – broad, woolly and open to a wide array of interpretations…….

Australia’s policy choice is to do away with pricing greenhouse gas emissions and cut ambition for renewable energy.

The “national circumstance” appears to be the world’s greatest defender of coal.http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2014/dec/03/will-australia-be-the-great-coal-defender-at-lima-climate-talks

December 5, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming