The Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has ignored the 20% or so of Australia's greenhouse emissions coming from logging and clearance of forests and woodlands as a huge low-cost opportunity to address climate change, Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown said today.

"Logging, from the Tiwi Islands to Tasmania, is not needed for domestic wood needs as Australia has more than 1.5 million hectares of to-be-logged plantations for its paper and structural timber market," Senator Brown said.

Greens campaign for 40% target

The Australian Greens will campaign for a 40 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 to save the planet from catastrophic climate change.

"Prime Minister Rudd's 5% target is a global embarrassment and a recipe for global catastrophe," Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown said today.

"The Rudd target of 5 per cent will anger voters. It is exactly where John Howard would have placed Australia in 2009 - a spoiler as the Copenhagen conference on climate change reaches for a much higher goal.

Australian Greens leader Bob Brown says that the telephone calls to Rudd from global leaders on climate change action underscore an emerging recognition that the Australian government is opting for failure.

"The recognised minimum of 25% reduction by 2020 in greenhouse gas emissions has become, instead, a maximum for Rudd who is not disputing press speculation that he will set Australia's target as low as a 5-15% reduction," Senator Brown said in Hobart this morning.

The Greens policy is for a 40% reduction by 2020 in order to avoid dangerous climate change.

Promise of world leadership evaporates in office

Prime Minister Rudd's decision to opt for a weak greenhouse gas reduction target of five to 15 per cent by 2020 reneges on his election promises to tackle climate change with ‘real action' because ‘climate change is just too serious'.

In 2007 Mr Rudd warned ‘the consequences of failing to act, or getting it wrong, are just too great...Labor will lead by example [and] restore Australia's international leadership on climate change' - May 30, 2007.

Monday, 1 December 2008

Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, has again ducked answering a question on what goals in tackling climate change Australia will take to the global conference in Poznan, Poland next week.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong won't say if she'll reveal the Federal Government's 2020 target for greenhouse gas emission reduction before she goes to international climate change talks in Poznan in Poland in December.

Ducking the question from Greens Leader Senator Bob Brown in the Senate today, Senator Wong said she will make the announcement on targets in December. But she refused to say if she would let Australians know the targets before she goes to Poznan, or if she would leave it to the rarefied air of the pre-Christmas week to make the information known.
 

The Australian Greens will green-up the Prime Minister's $10.4 billion package and extend it to ensure more jobs and local economic stimulus.

The Greens welcomed the package and say they will seek to have the $1.5 billion housing package lead into a four year, $4.7 billion plan aimed at creating thousands of green-collar jobs and assisting all homeowners.

"Countries with green economies are going to be the countries which do best this century. Greed has taken us into this crisis, Green will lead us out," Senator Brown said.

Prime Minister Rudd must reject the defeatism expected in Professor Garnaut's final report tomorrow and heed the advice of scientists to push for strong emissions targets that can prevent runaway climate change, according to Australian Greens Leader, Senator Bob Brown.

"The science is clear - we cannot afford to fail on climate change," Senator Brown said.

"Australians know that success is the only option, and at the next election they will rightly punish the Rudd Government if it runs up the white flag."

Rudd must lead globe towards strict targets

The weak targets advocated in the supplementary report from the Garnaut review released today are based on outdated science, risk catastrophic climate change and will undermine global negotiations towards an effective climate treaty, Australian Greens Senators Bob Brown and Christine Milne said today.

"Professor Garnaut concluded that it 'is worth paying less than 1% of GNP as a premium for the 450[ppm] strategy'. Surely, then, this should be our starting point, not our ultimate goal," Senator Brown said.