A senior Australian official has said this year’s chair of the G20 summit sees little consensus among the Group of 20 leading economies to take major new steps on climate change.
Dr Heather Smith, the personal representative or G20 sherpa of Australia’s conservative Liberal-National Prime Minister Tony Abbott, is helping shape the agenda for November’s G20 summit in the Queensland state capital, Brisbane.
Reuters Newsagency reports that she was speaking about the importance of finding agreement across the group.
DR Smith’s statements appear at odds with the views of the United States President Barack Obama and leaders of the European Union, both of whom have lobbied the Liberal-National government heavily in support of climate change being an agenda item at the G20 meeting.
President Obama even sent an envoy to Australia earlier this year to lobby Mr Abbott on the issue and it is understood to have been a topic when the Prime Minister recently visited Washington.
Reuters reports Dr Smith said there was strong political consensus within the G20 on the importance of political action on climate change.
She added that the summit would give momentum to climate change negotiations as it has in the past.
G20 countries were encouraged to invest in green infrastructure, and there was work on reducing fossil fuel subsidies and on climate change financing, she said after giving a speech on Australia’s G20 presidency.
However she added: “You have to find consensus where there is consensus, and there is no consensus in the G20 to do anything beyond those areas I’ve mentioned.
“And it’s not an Australian position, it reflects the membership,” she said, alluding to members that she said were not as vocal as others.
Even on the question of phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, she said the US was trying to run a pilot project on that but had so far gotten only one other country to join.
“So if countries want to do something, you have to get consensus in order to do them,” she said.
Mr Abbott takes the position that climate change is a significant problem but not the only problem or even the most important one the world faces.
He is currently taking legislative steps to have the country’s carbon price laws repealed, arguing that it harms Australia’s economy without necessarily helping the environment.
