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G8 Climate Deal

July 11th, 2009 at 11:17am

Kevin Rudd has signed on the dotted line on behalf of Australia, despite the fact that Australia is not a part of the G8.

AUSTRALIA has signed off on a global deal to restrain global warming to two degrees which could mean Australia must do more to slash greenhouse gas emissions.

Errr, no. Greenhouse gas emission continue to skyrocket, but temperatures haven’t risen for about a decade, in fact they seem to be going down.

Anyway, the science of it (which Kevin Rudd and his “G8 and then a few” buddies clearly don’t understand) to one side, if they’re serious about this, it’s a serious worry.

Australian climate expert Will Steffen says limiting warming to two degrees means a global atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases of not more than 450 parts per million.

And for the world to reach that, Australia must cut emissions by 25 per cent by 2020, and by 80 per cent by 2050, he says.
[..]
Australia has promised to cut emissions by 5 to 25 per cent by 2020, and by 60 per cent by 2050.

The existing (albeit thankfully unpassed by parliament) targets are damaging enough. If they go ahead with the greater cuts, we might as well all pack up and go to a country with a sane government, and take our money with us. In fact, it looks like that’s what Kevin Rudd wants us to do:

Mr Rudd said international progress on climate change at talks in Italy represented “modest” but significant steps.

Meanwhile Mr. Rudd is using the hot air of non-binding agreements to try and ram through his Emission Trading Scheme.

The G8 had provided strong support to emissions trading schemes as a good way to reduce emissions, Mr Rudd said, adding the federal opposition should take note of this and pass the government’s scheme.

The forum aimed at making progress ahead of key UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December, which is due to ink a new climate pact.

But a stray microphone has caught Mr. Rudd out. It turns out that he doesn’t believe Copenhagen will be any more than a bunch of people ranting at each other:

“Right now I don’t think we are on track to get an agreement at Copenhagen,” Mr Rudd told [Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen]. “There are too many problems.”

It looks like I won’t need to lose any sleep over the economic consequences of the “G8 and then some” communiqué after all.

Samuel

Entry Filed under: General News,Global Warming,Samuel's Editorials

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