Coalition backtrack on Paris deal. ABC cuts corners on energy

Eighteen months on from the Paris agreement, and Australia appears to have forgotten what it signed up for. And it appears to be preparing, if not to abandon ship on the climate deal, then at least to stop rowing.

Federal energy and environment minister Josh Frydenberg told ABC TV Four Corners program titled “Power Failure” broadcast on Monday night that Australia may not reach zero net emissions until the latter half of the century.

He gave the impression that the only thing Australia had signed up for was the weak 2030 target of a 26-28 per cent cut in emissions from 2005 levels by 2030, branded inadequate by the Climate Change Authority and hopelessly so by most other analysis.

Either Frydenberg is suffering from amnesia, or he is once again cowing to the Coalition’s powerful right-wing rump, the same group that deems though shalt not mouth the words carbon price, or infer that renewable energy is good.

Read the story by Giles Parkinson on RenewEconomy - “Coalition backtrack on Paris deal. ABC cuts corners on energy.”