Australia’s status as a climate wrecker at last years UN climate meeting in Warsaw (COP19) is deteriorating even further this week, with the gulf between the Abbott government’s actions on climate change and its rhetoric growing wider and more confusing by the day.
The Government was planning to not send a minister to the latest climate meeting in Lima (COP20), until Foreign Minister Julie Bishop forced the issue in cabinet. Her request was approved on the proviso Trade Minister Andrew Robb “chaperoned” the trip due to “the significant economic and investment matters involved”. This statement is totally at odds with the Government’s fight to stop climate change being discussed at the G20 given it was an “economic meeting”. Allegedly leaked talking points from the Prime Minister’s office show that it is spinning its grudging allowance of Bishop to attend COP20 with Robb in tow as a sign of its “commitment to dealing with climate change”, but the attendance of the Foreign Affairs and Trade ministers instead of the Environmental Minister has also been dubbed an attempt to set up the climate talks to fail. Either way, the move appears to again be for show, not action, with the Government refusing to contribute to the Green Climate Fund when even conservative buddies Canada and New Zealand are.
Australia has already won two Fossil of the Day awards, and with it being named the worst performing industrial economy on climate change and Julie Bishop talking down unprecedented moves by China to cap coal use and emissions as “business as usual to 2030″, it is quite likely it could see a repeat of the five fossil awards it picked up at COP19.
the interpretOr 