A majority of countries want visionary action rather than pragmatism at the Paris climate talks, says the International Institute for Environment and Development’s Saleemul Huq.
World leaders gathering at COP21 should ditch old ideas about ‘climate equity’.
Reuters/Jacky Naegelen
The sooner nations stop viewing emissions reduction as a burden to be shared, and more as an opportunity to be grasped, the sooner real climate progress will be achieved.
Gas is the solution to some but not all our problems.
magnascan
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
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.
Global scrutiny has pummelled VW shares.
REUTERS/Axel Schmidt
The market reaction to the VW emissions scandal is just like that of a jilted lover.
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
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.
Abbott isn’t the first leader to be toppled amid questions over his approach to climate change.
AAP Mick Tsikas
From Hawke-Keating to Rudd-Gillard, climate policy has an uncanny ability to cost Australian political leaders their jobs. And it was a key element in the rivalry between Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull.
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
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.
The best way to ensure emissions reductions are permanent is to transform the energy sector.
Carbon emissions image from www.shutterstock.com
58 countries have submitted their climate targets ahead of international talks in Paris. We know the numbers, but not all efforts to combat climate change are equal.
Connie Hedegaard says political leaders could stop coming to climate summits unless Paris delivers significant progress.
Christopher Wright
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
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
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
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
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
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?
Avoiding logging in native forests could earn Australia millions of extra carbon credits.
David Blair
The Renewable Energy Target now includes wood waste from forestry. But a more sustainable use of Australia’s native forests would be to leave them alone and earn carbon credits from the avoided emissions.
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’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?