Australia's government is sticking firmly to a position that there is no di...
MELBOURNE - Australia’s government is sticking firmly to a position that there is no direct link between climate change and the country’s devastating bushfires, despite public anger, the anguish of victims and warnings from scientists.
Instead they say Australia, which contributes 1.3% of the world’s carbon emissions but is the second-largest emitter per capita behind the United States, should be rewarded for beating its emissions reduction targets for 2020. “In most countries it isn’t acceptable to pursue emissionreduction policies that add substantially to the cost of living, destroy jobs, reduce incomes and impede growth,” Taylor wrote in The Australian newspaper on Dec. 31.
Environmental groups say Australia will only meet its emissions targets by including old carbon credits the government wants to count from the 1992 Kyoto Protocol.“One of the key drivers of fire intensity, fire spread rates and fire area is temperature. And in Australia we’ve just experienced record high temperatures,” said Mark Howden, director of the Climate Change Institute at Australian National University.
To others, from opposition Labor to film star Russell Crowe, who skipped the Golden Globes awards to fight bushfires in Australia, to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, the link is clear between climate change and Australia’s fires which have killed 25 people, destroyed thousands of homes and razed more than 8 million hectares of land since September.
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