They’re back and still bad — it’s Australia!

They thought they could hide behind the soot and smog of Katowice, but not today! Let’s welcome back Australia to the scoreboard – where have you been?

The Aussies are big on transparency and have a robust system of greenhouse gas accounting and report on emissions at home, which is why we know they have had four years of rising emissions after scrapping a successful emissions trading system. So how will they meet their target?

Through carbon credits, of course! While their neighbor, New Zealand, came out this week and announced they will not use Kyoto Assigned Amount Units (AAUs) to meet their Paris Target, Australia has remained silent in transparency and accounting in anticipation of using its hundreds of millions of credits to meet its target in a canter.

Let’s be clear, Australia is not interested in reducing emissions, it saddled up to the Trump sideshow on coal to promote its fossil fuel exports and Carbon Capture and Storage technology and, at home, its Energy Minister is fast tracking plans to use taxpayer dollars to build new coal fired power stations.

So, welcome back Australia – don’t you think it is finally time to wake up and smell the smog?

 

About CAN: The Climate Action Network (CAN) is a worldwide network of over 1300 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in more than 120 working to promote government and individual action to limit human induced climate change to ecologically sustainable levels. www.climatenetwork.org 

About Fossil: The Fossil of the Day awards were first presented at the climate talks in 1999, in Bonn, initiated by the German NGO Forum. During United Nations climate change negotiations (www.unfccc.int), members of the Climate Action Network (CAN), vote for countries judged to have done their 'best' to block progress in the negotiations or in the implementation of the Paris Agreement.