Where is Australia's Global Leadership?
Despite voters electing Kevin Rudd on a promise to tackle climate change, he has turned into little more than a cheerleader for the big polluters.
The Rudd government proposes to reduce Australia’s carbon emissions by
5%-25% by 2020, depending on the global climate deal decided in Copenhagen in December 2009. The government’s target has so many loopholes that a 25% cut is virtually impossible to achieve. It is so pathetic that it has even caused the head of their own climate change review, Professor Ross Garnaut, to squirm with embarrassment.
Our role in international negotiations
At the 2009 Copenhagen climate meeting, world leaders will gather to set new emissions targets. It’s one of the most important meetings in history – probably our last collective chance to seriously tackle climate change.
Australia and the Pacific are at the frontline of climate impacts. Australia must go to the Copenhagen negotiations with an emissions reduction target of 50% by 2020. Nothing less will do in the face of a climate emergency in our region.
The government must also commit to stopping deforestation (which causes around one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions) by supporting the Greenpeace Forests for Climate fund in Copenhagen.
Pacific leaders are calling for ambitious targets. The EU has tabled 30% reductions as a minimum. Australia must step up to the plate too.
Australia's troubled carbon target
The Treasury's own modelling shows that Australia’s current 5%-25% unconditional domestic target won’t reduce our emissions at all until 2035 because of the unlimited opportunity for polluters to buy international permits (which, by the way, the taxpayer funds in the form of massive subsidies).
More government (in)action:
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd hands out billions of taxpayers’ dollars to polluting fossil fuel companies every year. Just days before the May 2009 Budget, Greenpeace beamed a reminder onto Loy Yang A power station in the Latrobe Valley, Victoria. © Greenpeace/Alcock
Did you know?
- The wind industry globally now employs about 400,000 people. In the US, the wind industry is now is a larger employer than the coal industry.
- Despite the global financial crisis, renewable energy jobs increased dramatically in 2008. While exact figures aren't yet available, job numbers will be well above the 2.4 million jobs of 2006.1
(1) Renewables Global Status Report: 2009 Update, Ren21, available at http://www.ren21.net/pdf/RE_GSR_2009_update.pdf