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Articles on Emissions targets

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Malcolm Turnbull, as a former investment banker, should be able to feel the prevailing global winds around climate finance. AAP Image/Paul Miller

Australia’s climate policy is messier than a teenager’s bedroom, but is Turnbull the man to tidy it up?

After years of squabbling over climate policy, do we now have a prime minister prepared to clean up the mess? Given a fair wind at the Paris summit and an election win, Turnbull might just pull it off.
Ros Kelly was the first in a long line of federal ministers to address themselves to the question of Australia’s emissions target. AAP Image/Lee Besford

25 years ago the Australian government promised deep emissions cuts, and yet here we still are

When Australia’s government first pledged to set an emission-reduction target, Jon Bon Jovi was riding high in the charts. The progress made in the 25 years since has hardly been a blaze of glory.
In 2010 Malcolm Turnbull threatened to cross the floor to vote for emissions trading. Polls suggest the public would back him now, even if his party won’t. AAP Image/Alan Porritt

If he wants to win an election, Turnbull should go back to his old self on climate

In backing Abbott’s existing climate policy, Malcolm Turnbull looks like appeasing his party. But his prospects would be better served by appealing to voters who are anxious for strong climate action.
Bernie Fraser, Greg Hunt and Clive Palmer announce the Climate Change Authority’s emissions trading review last year, after Palmer prevented the authority being abolished. AAP/Alan Porritt

Ignored by the government, shrunk by resignations – where now for Australia’s Climate Change Authority?

The Climate Change Authority, rocked by this week’s resignation of its chairman Bernie Fraser but saved last year by the Senate, will continue reviewing climate policy - even if its advice is ignored.
Connie Hedegaard says political leaders could stop coming to climate summits unless Paris delivers significant progress. Christopher Wright

‘I fear we will see radicalisation’ if Paris climate talks flop, says chair of 2009 Copenhagen summit

Connie Hedegaard, who chaired the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, says the stakes are high for this year’s crunch talks in Paris, and that without a solid result, the process could begin to fragment.
Few other world leaders are as enthusiastic as Tony Abbott in endorsing coal as ‘good for humanity’. AAP/Dan Peled

Zombie politics vs climate action: will the coming election focus on our future?

Australia’s failure to lead on climate action marks a stark shift in political priorities in the past decade. The government is all about immediate economic returns whatever the long-term costs.
Conventional wisdom says Barack Obama will hit political obstacles on the way to fulfilling his climate ambitions. But they might be easier to sidestep than you think, EPA/Michael Reynolds/AAP

Forget the hostile Congress – Obama can cut global climate deals on his own terms

Much has been made of the domestic political roadblocks between US President Barack Obama and climate action. But by using existing treaties he can get around the hostile Congress and help cut global emissions.
Australia’s foreign minister Julie Bishop at the last year’s Lima climate talks, where nations agreed new transparency rules over climate targets. DFAT

New UN rules put the spotlight on climate laggards to lift their game

Countries that drag their feet on climate action have fewer places to hide these days. Rules brought in at the 2014 Lima talks require them not just to set targets, but to publicly justify them too.
The US EPA’s Clean Power Plan will cut power sector emissions 32% by 2030. EPA/Justin Lane/AAP

Obama’s new climate plan is leadership fuel for other nations

President Obama’s new targets for emissions from electricity are a crucial step towards a credible US climate policy. And where the United States leads, others are more likely to follow.
US President Barack Obama has unveiled the United States’ most comprehensive climate policy so far. EPA/Michael Reynolds/AAP

Obama takes ‘biggest step’ on US climate policy: experts react

US President Barack Obama’s new climate plan aims to cut greenhouse emissions from the nation’s coal-dominated power sector by 32% by 2030. Will it get through, and how will it affect this year’s climate talks?
John Howard is a role model for the Abbott government, but the world remembers his hardline climate tactics in 1997 less fondly. AAP Photo/ Bluey Thomson

Australia hit its Kyoto target, but it was more a three-inch putt than a hole in one

Australia’s government boasts of being one of the few nations to hit its Kyoto emissions target. But is it any wonder, when the Howard government successfully lobbied to make it almost unmissably easy?
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has suggested Australia has been true to its emissions reduction commitments but that other countries have not. AAP Image/Lukas Coch

FactCheck: has Australia met its climate goals, while other nations make ‘airy-fairy promises’?

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has described other countries’ emissions reduction targets as “airy-fairy promises that never come to anything.” How does that statement stack up against the evidence?

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