Antinuclear

As usual with climate politics, most Australians have little understanding of just how out of touch the Turnbull government is compared to other major nations……

large numbers of Liberal and National Party politicians put their conservative loyalties ahead of rational science and the self-interest of their country. They don’t believe climate change is real, and they’ll do everything in their power to stop Malcolm Turnbull (or anyone else) from doing something about it. 

Australia’s Prime Minister is in Paris for the COP21 global climate change conference.

I suppose we should be grateful he is there at all. One struggles to imagine what Tony Abbott might have said and done at such an event. Abbott was always at his worst when the opportunity came to sow discord and create hostility; at the very least, we can be thankful that the decidedly more urbane and diplomatic Turnbull is there in the place of his predecessor.

Sure enough, Turnbull told delegates that Australia now comes to the talks “with confidence and optimism.” That is indeed a different approach to Abbott’s love affair with fossilised carbon.

Turnbull also made some very modest announcements. He pledged Australia to the final years of the Kyoto protocol – an agreement that is lapsing anyway, but which will allow Australian firms to resume purchasing overseas carbon abatement permits, potentially a big saving for the government’s Direct Action spendathon.

$800 million is also being promised to developing nations for climate adaptation. In keeping with the Coalition’s well-demonstrated contempt for foreign aid of any kind, the money is being taken from the existing foreign aid pot, already savaged in recent budgets. In contrast, Canada’s new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged $2.5 billion.

Unfortunately, friendly gestures and some modest announcements leave Australia well behind the rest of the world when it comes to climate action.

For instance, Australia’s emissions reduction target of 26-28 per cent is risible, and based on some rather dodgy accounting procedures that date all the way back to the first Kyoto conference itself. Back at that event, Liberal Environment Minister Robert Hill negotiated an 8 per cent increase for Australia from 2008-2012. Greg Hunt’s claim that Australia is meeting its obligations is therefore misleading (in keeping with pretty much everything Hunt says).

In any case, 28 per cent is nowhere near enough. Because Australia’s economy is so dirty, we need to decarbonise quickly if we are to cope with the economic dislocations of a warmer, cleaner world. But Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is firm in her insistence that the target will not be increased.

Nor will Australia sign a communiqué aimed at phasing out fossil fuel subsidies. Given the government claims to care about balancing the budget, you would have thought whopping subsidies like the $7 billion-a-year fuel tax credit handed out to mining and agriculture would have been top of the list.

The communiqué wasn’t even a binding treaty, by the way – just a statement of intent. The conservative government of New Zealand’s John Key had no trouble signing up to it……

Then there’s the biggest subsidy of all: the right to spew toxic gases into the atmosphere. Since Tony Abbott abolished the carbon tax in 2014 it hasn’t cost polluting companies a cent. Take it all together, as the Climate Institute has, and fossil fuel subsidies in Australia could be in the range of $14 to $39 billion every year.

Perhaps inevitably, Turnbull is being compared unfavourably with Canada’s Trudeau, who came to Paris with an electoral mandate to reverse the doleful anti-climate policies of his predecessor Stephen Harper.

As usual with climate politics, most Australians have little understanding of just how out of touch the Turnbull government is compared to other major nations……

large numbers of Liberal and National Party politicians put their conservative loyalties ahead of rational science and the self-interest of their country. They don’t believe climate change is real, and they’ll do everything in their power to stop Malcolm Turnbull (or anyone else) from doing something about it. https://newmatilda.com/2015/12/01/the-coalition-is-spending-billions-to-help-us-pollute-more/