The big smoke: Morrison under increasing pressure to change with the climate

When Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor took the stage in Madrid for an official address to the United Nations climate conference this week, he made no mention of the bushfires ravaging Australia.

Images of the inferno that has razed millions of hectares only contributed to Australia's reputation as an outlier on climate change action. Energy Minister, Angus Taylor, never mentioned Australia's bushfires when he spoke at Madrid.

It was an omission that drew international interest, says Australian National University professor of environmental economics Frank Jotzo, who was representing the university as an observer at the conference.

"When any Australian at this conference is talking to anyone not from Australia, the conversation turns to the fires and that so much of Australia is burning," he says. "People are perplexed about how an Australian energy minister, in an official statement, could not talk about the bushfires."

International media had already seized on Australia's horror start to bushfire season, in which six people have died and more than 700 homes have been lost. Images beamed around the world of the inferno that has razed millions of hectares only contributed to Australia's reputation as an outlier on climate change action.

Read the story from The Age by Mike Foley - “The big smoke: Morrison under increasing pressure to change with the climate.”

How Australia's attempted carbon trickery is stoking India to pollute

In the closing backroom negotiations at the United Nations climate conference in Madrid this week, the full impact of Australia’s proposal to use accounting tricks to nullify its commitments to cut carbon emissions became abundantly clear. In response, India for the first time proposed using credits from old "clean development" projects under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol as a way to water down the targets it committed to under the Paris Agreement in 2015.

Bush fire smoke in Sydney this week.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison told us yet again on Thursday that Australia only accounts for 1.3 per cent of global emissions, so what we do at home makes little or no difference to the environmental outcome. But the tough-talking in Madrid turns that logic on its head. India is the world's fourth-largest emitter. And Australia’s dodgy accounting proposals are stoking India – and other big emitters – to pollute more.

Read the story from The Sydney Morning Herald by Dean Bialek - “How Australia's attempted carbon trickery is stoking India to pollute.”