Somewhat predictably the call by Australia’s conservative Liberal-National Prime Minister Tony Abbot for Britain and New Zealand to join with Canada in an anti-climate change alliance has fallen on deaf ears.
The United Kingdom’s Conservative climate and energy minister has rejected suggestions his government could form an alliance of “like-minded” nations to oppose carbon pricing.
In moves that show Australia’s increasing isolation on the subject was shown when New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key said he was caught off-guard by the idea.
In the UK, Greg Barker put an end to Mr Abbott’s dream that a group of countries could be formed to undermine global moves to install carbon pricing and challenge a push by United States President Barack Obama for stronger international regulation of climate change.
At the same time Mr Keys dismissed the idea of an alliance and signalled his government had no intention of walking away from its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).
The comments leave Canada, with its anti-carbon tax prime minister Stephen Harper as Australia’s only likely ally on the subject.
Mr Barker told British media that the UK would not be joining Australia to challenge international regulation of carbon emissions.
“We are engaged with Australia and New Zealand, encouraging them to take a responsible proactive part in seeking an ambitious global treaty on climate change,” he said.
Earlier this year, British Prime Minister David Cameron said he believed that ”man-made climate change is one of the most serious threats that this country and this world faces”.
Bob Ward from the London School of Economics Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, said: ‘This looks like a desperate move by Tony Abbott who must be beginning to realise how isolated Australia and Canada are as China, the United States, Europe and the rest of the world move towards stronger action on climate change.”
Earlier this week, Mr Obama and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said political leaders had to recognise that climate change was the number one priority for governments as the most significant issue the planet faces.
Mr Obama has also regulated that emissions from coal-fired power plants must be reduced by 30 per cent by 2030 and also expressed his preference for carbon pricing or a cap-and-trade system to combat rising greenhouse gas emissions.
Mr Abbott, by contrast, has said repeatedly that while climate change was “a significant problem, it’s not the only or even the most important problem the world faces”.
Asked if he would challenge Mr Obama on the ways to combat climate change, Mr Abbott responded: ”If climate change does come up in further discussions here in the United States I will be pointing to the scale of what we are doing in Australia as evidence of our deep seriousness of this issue.”
