PLEA Network

15 November 2021, Renew Economy. Australia hails COP26 “green light for more coal,” won’t budge on 2030 target. With the ink barely dry on the Glasgow Climate Pact, the Morrison Coalition government has settled straight back into its domestic routine of climate obfuscation and obstruction, proudly declaring its intent to ignore one of the global pact’s most urgent requests, to ratchet up weak 2030 emissions targets. On Sunday, Australia’s minister for emissions reduction Angus Taylor issued a statement welcoming the “positive outcomes” of COP26, among which he appears to count one of its most widely lamented failures – the down-playing of the urgency to phase out fossil fuels. The last minute watering down of the pact – which quite literally brought tears to the eyes of COP26 president Alok Sharma – changed the wording of the agreement to call for a “phase down” of unabated coal use, as opposed to a “phase out.” Equally thrilled was fellow Nationals MP Matt Canavan, who took to Sky News to hail the agreement struck at COP26 as a “green light for more coal production,” which in turn, he argued, would bring more and more people out of poverty. But the real kicker in Angus Taylor’s post-COP26 statement was delivered with this line, towards the end: “Australia’s 2030 target is fixed and we are committed to meeting and beating it, as we did with our Kyoto-era targets.” Read more here