Antinuclear

Labor and Greens slam Coalition climate review

Guardian, Eleanor Ainge Roy, 20 Dec 17, In the shadow of a cabinet reshuffle yesterday, the government released a long-anticipated review of its climate policies which foreshadows loosening the current safeguard mechanism for pollution levels.

Labor and the Greens blasted the new annual emissions projections, which predict Australia will increase its emissions all the way to 2030 and beyond, and called the Coalition’s action on climate change woefully inadequate. “When you look at those numbers you really do start to understand why [the government] would sneak them out, because they are a shocking set of numbers,” the shadow climate change minister, Mark Butler, said.

Butler also condemned the permissive signal on the safeguards mechanism in the review, as did the Greens’ climate spokesman, Adam Bandt, who noted the government wanted to weaken its “flawed” emissions reduction fund by allowing companies’ pollution baselines to be increased. “The data is devastating and the policy review is a travesty,” Bandt said. “Pollution is going up, we won’t meet even our paltry Paris targets and the government’s only plan is to make matters worse by allowing companies to buy dodgy permits from pig farms in China instead of cutting Australia’s emissions.”…..https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/20/morning-mail-labor-and-greens-slam-coalition-climate-review

December 20, 2017 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, politics