Australia has jumped from the vanguard of developed nations battling climate change, and is now an international pariah on the issue. As the Marshall Islands Foreign Minister, Tony de Brum, had reason to note this week, Australia's ''backsliding'' on climate change does not make sense and ''goes against the grain of the world''.
The Abbott government says it plans to spend $2.55 billion on an emissions reduction fund and that, like the previous Rudd/Gillard government, it is committed to reducing Australia's emissions by 5 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020. In that context, Tony Abbott's decision not to attend this week's United Nations Climate Summit was wrong. The Prime Minister should have joined the 120 leaders at the summit in New York to discuss the best ways to work together to tackle climate change. He may have learnt something.
Source: The Age