Is this simply political showmanship, or is it the real deal?

Greg Hunt - signing up to
 the Paris deal, for us!

First the good news. Greg Hunt is about to join 60 heads of state and representatives from more than 150 countries at the United Nations signing ceremony for last year’s Paris climate agreement, and has said Australia will move to ratify it by the end of the year.

That eagerness, in itself, is a step forward. The Howard government refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol for a decade.

Now the bad news. Neither major party has yet advanced a detailed and credible policy to achieve what Australia is solemnly promising.

Bruised by the brutal politics of the barren, wasted years of climate policy war, the major parties are circling and wary – the government trying to manage its sizeable internal climate sceptic faction by saying as little as possible on the subject in the lead-up to the election, Labor making promises and sending signals it is prepared to do much more but hesitating with the detail lest it once again feel the barrage of a full-bore axe-the-tax scare campaign.

Read The Guardian story - “Australia's solemn climate promise much more than a signing ceremony.”