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The UN is calling on national leaders to back a global agreement on reducing human-produced CO2 emissions with the stated intention of limiting “global warming to 2C degrees above the pre-industrial level”. This pact is to be signed in Paris in December and Australia has agreed to participate. Thrashed out at the 2014 Lima conference, the process called upon individual nations ‘ready to do so’ to submit national pledges by the first quarter of 2015, with Australia saying it would take the pledge sometime around now.
Yet it remains unclear if the Australian government subscribes to the 2C target.The recently released issues paper, ‘Setting Australia’s post-2020 target for greenhouse gas emissions’, does not refer to this aim. I have sought clarification, unsuccessfully, from Environment Minister Greg Hunt and my local member, Dr Peter Hendy, a Liberal. The 2C limit is a very specific target, one that doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room.This is as it should be if one accepts the prognostications of catastrophe upon which the alleged need for this agreement is based.(Which, for the record, I don’t. But let us play the game anyway.)