Prof. Williams tells of the need to discuss climate change at the G20 Forum

Prof Jeremy Williams.

The G20 economies generate 80% of the world’s carbon emissions.

Representatives of nations responsible for those emissions will be in Brisbane next month for the annual G20 Forum and yet Australian PM Tony Abbott has declared the manifestation of those emissions, climate change, will not be discussed.

Yet U.S. President Obama’s deputy national security adviser for international economics, Caroline Atkinson, has made the point that the group should give a political push to “specific steps” to address climate change.

Writing on The Conversation the director of the Asia Pacific Centre for Sustainable Enterprise Griffith University, Professor Jeremy Williams, said climate change is actually good for a nation’s GDP.

In a story headed: “Abbott’s G20 agenda: climate still the elephant in the room” he said, “Expenditure of this kind, however, is preserving and defending our well-being, not enhancing it”.