Oz sizzles as climate action cools – Jim Salinger
Posted in Reflections On Science
2017 has been a sizzler for Australia, showing global warming is alive and well, but as Dr Jim Salinger writes in the NZ Herald, both Australian and New Zealand governments are failing on climate action.
An excerpt (read in full):
As Australia sizzles and the ice on our Southern Alps shrink what climate action is being taken by the Australian and New Zealand governments?
In Australia, within the governing Liberal-National Party (LNP) coalition, climate policy is debilitated.
Australia will fall short of its Paris carbon reduction targets unless it massively lifts its renewable energy production to two-thirds of national demand in the next decade or so.
The LNP is in a shambles, with former Prime Minister Tony Abbott prepared to cross the floor to stop further renewable energy policies.
There is a rump within the governing LNP who wish to continue investment in fossil fuel power stations at the expense of renewable energy.
And in New Zealand, Steven Joyce has signalled that there will be no further development of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) until the second half of 2018.
This means that any meaningful climate policy will not be developed until over three years after the Paris Climate Accord was reached in 2015.
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