The COP20 climate talks in Lima, Peru concluded yesterday. It will take a while to sift through the outcomes and figure out what they mean, but for now I want to concentrate on the Australian government, which has unsurprisingly continued its crusade against climate action. Unlike last year when Australia didn’t bother to send a …
Tag: Emissions Targets
Sep 23 2014
The climate speech Tony Abbott should make
Australian PM Tony Abbott isn’t going to the Ban-Ki-Moon climate summit in New York City on 23 September. He should be, and these are the carefully scripted remarks that he should make there. I humbly stand before you to seek forgiveness from the delegates present, and from all citizens of the Earth, for my thoughtless …
Sep 21 2014
Bendigo People’s Climate speech: we need action now!
Human-caused global warming is the greatest threat facing humanity. Just this week I was reading up on the latest science. It makes pretty depressing reading. Politicians are stuck on outdated advice that major impacts and feedbacks lie beyond two degrees of warming. But the science is telling us we’re already hitting some at just three-quarters …
Mar 28 2014
Senate inquiry bogged down in party lines
A Senate inquiry into the Australian Government’s proposed climate Direct Action Plan reported on Wednesday. The report says nothing new, and I’m fed up with the inane narrow positions which each of the three parties has manoeuvred themselves into. First, the good news. The main report, authored by Labor Senators Lin Thorp, Louise Pratt, and …
Oct 30 2013
CCA Targets Review releases daft draft report
Today Australia’s independent Climate Change Authority (CCA) released the Targets and Progress Review Draft Report. (The word “Caps” has been removed from the Review’s name, presumably to dissociate it from the former government’s emissions trading scheme.) The new Liberal government plans to abolish the CCA, and the legal requirement to set an emissions target, as …
Sep 04 2013
A closer look at Tony Abbott’s climate policy
Three days to the Australian election, and both major political parties are still planning 20 years of climate inaction. I’ve written at length about the climate policy of the incumbent Labor Government led by Kevin Rudd, who wants to move from Australia’s existing fixed carbon price to a 20-year emissions trading scheme (ETS) with a …
Jul 16 2013
The greatest greenwash of our generation
Newly reinstated Australian Labor Party leader and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has today demonstrated yet again that he is the worst type of climate change denier: a skilled greenwasher. In 2007, Rudd rightly told the National Climate Change Summit: Climate change is the great moral challenge of our generation. Climate change is not just an …
Apr 11 2013
Australia’s carbon price time bomb
Australia’s carbon price, presently fixed at $23/tonne, is the subject of many political talking points. The most important (and perhaps most confusing) disagreement is over whether or not the carbon price is effective. The Labor government and the Greens, who designed the policy, claim the carbon price is already cutting emissions, pointing to reports that …
Mar 09 2013
Caps Review Part 5: Emissions caps
This is the fifth part in a series about the Caps and Targets Review being conducted by the Australian Government’s independent Climate Change Authority (CCA) this year. Part 1 summarized the global climate crisis, Part 2 explained the importance of the review and how CCA should approach it, Part 3 outlined the role Australia should …
Precarious Climate
- Bendigo Climate Drawdown Summit
- The Paris Agreement was a sham anyway
- Australian election: say no to the polluting major parties
- Will Turnbull act on climate?
- Are we approaching peak stupidity?
- Is Turnbull a green Liberal?
- 2014 the warmest year as global heating speeds up
- The Trans-Pacific Partnership: the dirtiest trade deal you’ve never heard of
- Tony Abbott’s intergenerational theft
- 2014: the year that was