Friday, September 07, 2018

Australia "We'll always have Paris" ...Or will we?

The Australian resources minister, Matt Canavan,  made clear the Paris climate treaty former PM Tony Abbott committed Australia to in 2015 “doesn’t actually bind us to anything in particular.”

Abbott said in 2015, when he announced Australia would be signing up, that the government was making a “definite commitment” to a 26% reduction in emissions by 2030 and “with the circumstances that we think will apply ... we can go up to 28%”.


Canavan said on Friday the Paris commitment was a three-page document that allowed Australia flexibility to build new coal plants. The resources minister said rather than focusing on the situation in 2030, “what I want to focus on is solving the crisis we have in energy today”.
“We have to build power stations. There’s nothing in the [Paris] agreement that would stop us building power stations, including coal-fired power stations,” Canavan said. “We need new ones”.

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