Australia’s political leaders have been warned their climate policies will affect how they’re judged on the world stage when it comes to negotiating a new agreement on global warming.
The Climate Institute, a leading think-tank, says the next three years will prove critical for global action, as nations seek to ratify a new binding pact on global warming at the 2015 United Nations climate summit in the French capital, Paris.
The environmental think-tank’s Erwin Jackson told AAP Newsagency that as a small nation with a large carbon footprint, Australia would be able to influence the negotiations by coming to the table with good ideas.
“Whether we’re listened to will depend on the credibility of our domestic policies,” Mr Jackson told AAP.
The institute today announced it would be tracking the climate policies of both Labor and the Liberal-National parties, the Australian Greens Party and key independents in the lead-up to the election.
How these policies claim to cut carbon pollution, penalise businesses for their emissions and prepare for severe weather associated with climate change will all be analysed in the institute’s “Pollute-O-Meter”.
Climate Institute head John Connor said he hoped the process would improve policies across the board and resolve the “uncertainty” around certain approaches to tackling global warming.
Regardless of who was elected in September, Mr Connor said Australia would need to move beyond the “fishbowl politics” that has swirled around the carbon price in recent years.
The next federal government, early in its term, would be called upon to sign up to a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, a milestone supported thus far by both Labor and the coalition.
Mr Connor said if the coalition pushed ahead with its plan to abolish the carbon price, just as China and other nations started pursuing their own forms of pricing pollution, Australia could face some tough questions abroad.
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People underestimate the importance of us, as a high-carbon economy, putting a limit on carbon,” he said.
“It was globally significant.”
He said Australia’s decisions mattered and scrapping the carbon price would be viewed negatively in some quarters, but warned against reading too simply into its impact.
Australia’s climate debate was a “roller-coaster” that still had many twists and turns in store.
“People who predict it’s going to travel along in the same way will get it wrong,” he said.
