Greg Hunt confident of 'helping' China, US, India and EU cut carbon emissions
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Version 0 of 1. Greg Hunt, the environment minister, has said he is confident of helping the world’s major economies commit to reducing carbon dioxide emissions in a new agreement that will stretch until 2050. Hunt said Australia would use its presidency of the G20 as a “catalyst” to help the “G4” – the US, China, the European Union and India – complete the groundwork for a new deal to lower emissions. But the minister faced scepticism and heckling as he argued for the government's environmental credentials at a Melbourne forum. United Nations climate talks in Paris next year have been identified as the time when a new global accord will be struck on cutting CO2 to lessen the impact of climate change. Hunt said the annual G20 talks, to be held in Brisbane in November, would be used to facilitate a long-term deal even though climate change is not on the official itinerary for the event. “As we head towards 2050 the great global challenge is to have a real and genuine agreement and that has to involve the G4,” he told the Doctors for the Environment conference in Melbourne. “We are proposing bringing together the largest four sources of emissions as a catalyst for a 2015 agreement. I don’t think the US and China will bind themselves legally but I think they will make a real and genuine commitment. “Our task is to work towards not just the 2020 outcome but towards a global agreement through to 2030 and 2040 and leading into 2050.” Hunt has previously floated the idea of formulating talks with the G4 but not since the Coalition’s election win in September last year. The G20 talks appear to sideline climate change, with the government leaving it off the official agenda in favour of focusing upon economic growth. The government raised eyebrows among some nations by failing to send a minister to the last round of UN climate talks. Hunt said success in reducing emissions internationally had been based on direct abatement and energy efficiency, downplaying the role of carbon pricing, which the Coalition is looking to repeal in Australia. “My problem is that we’ve just spent $7.5bn in the first year of the system for a 0.1% decrease in emissions,” he said. “That’s a significant cost, particularly for low-income families, but it doesn’t do the job. If you’re concerned about emissions what you’ll want to see is not a fig leaf, something which makes people feel good, as if we’re doing something, but to actually do something.” Hunt said that people involved in the European Union’s carbon pricing system had admitted it had “zero impact on actual emissions”. The government’s proposed direct action climate plan would “clean up” waste coal mine and landfill emissions, as well as encourage an end to the logging of carbon-dense old growth forest. In an occasionally tetchy question-and-answer session with the audience of doctors, Hunt was asked how the government’s bid to strip world heritage status from 74,000 hectares of largely old growth Tasmanian forest tallied with this plan. “I’ve ensured 100,000 hectares of the 170,000 protected hectares was preserved,” he said. “In the other 70,000 hectares 117 areas had been previously logged or degraded.” This response prompted a shout of “rubbish” from the audience. “It’s about the net balance of vegetation in this country,” Hunt said. “We have seen a significant net increase in vegetation since 1990 despite significant population growth and a doubling of economic growth.” Dr Kingsley Faulkner, national chairman of Doctors for the Environment, told Guardian Australia that the healthcare sector was increasingly concerned about the prospect of worse heatwaves, and many doctors were critical of the Coalition’s climate-change policies. “I think the Australian Medical Association will get more involved in lobbying on this, as they previously have with tobacco,” he said. “I made the point to [Hunt] that history will be very critical of him and this government if the country does not pull its weight. “The worry is that federal policy is driven by narrow vested interests and not the public interest, which is deeply short-sighted. The government has done some foolish things, such as getting rid of the Climate Commission, backing away from its commitment to the renewable energy target and overseeing a huge expansion in coal mining which will completely overcome any domestic emissions reduction.” Faulkner said the government’s target of a 5% cut in emissions by 2020, based on 2000 levels, was “grossly inadequate”, The independent Climate Change Authority, which the government plans to scrap, has recommended the target be trebled. The authority’s chairman, Bernie Fraser, recently backed carbon pricing as a key tool in lowering emissions, joining such people as former treasury head Ken Henry, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the OECD. |