Extract from ABC News
By Brigid Andersen
Updated about 6 hours ago
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has called for
ambitious climate targets to be set as world leaders gather in Paris
for the United Nations Climate Conference.
Mr Shorten spoke to Lateline from Paris as the
talks got underway and said nations that did not take strong action
would be increasingly isolated.
"The whole reason for this Paris conference
is because climate change is having worse and worse effects on our
environment and even more importantly, on our economy," he said.
"So nations who think that they don't need to
change, I think will get isolated in the future in trade and other
arrangements between nations."
French president Francois Hollande officially
opened the summit by telling world leaders that the "hope of all
of humanity rests on your shoulders".
Mr Shorten said he would be attending a number of
meetings while he was in Paris.
"I will be meeting with hopefully leaders
from the Pacific Island nations. They really do count on Australia as
being a big brother in the best sense of the word for standing up for
their concerns," he said.
"I'm looking forward to talking with
businesses. There's a lot of private sector interest in the decisions
that will be made at Paris, and the decisions that nations make.
"See, if a nation like Australia sets
ambitious goals, what will happen is that we can then encourage the
private sector to step in and help deliver the solutions from
technology to trade opportunities to investment in renewable energy."
Shorten says 'Turnbull playing in traffic'
Last week Mr Shorten announced Labor's
new climate policy with an emissions reduction target of 45 per cent
on 2005 levels by 2030.
He rejected suggestions a carbon price under the
proposal could be as high as $200 a tonne.
"It's just complete rubbish," he said.
He said the climate change debate had been one of
the more toxic issues in politics and that it would have been easy
for Labor to just give bipartisan support to the Government's
"ridiculously low targets".
"Malcolm Turnbull's caught. He's caught in
the middle of the road on this. He's playing in the traffic," he
said.
"On one hand he had to in order to become the
leader of the Liberal Party, sign up to Tony Abbott's climate change
policies, with their ridiculously low targets. On the other hand he
should at least be honest with people and admit the consequences of
change."
He said the cost of not acting on climate change
was too high.
"The truth of the matter is that if sea
levels rise, property will become, and infrastructure in Australia
will become a lot more costly," he said.
"We'll have more drought. We'll have more
extreme weather events. So there's a big cost in not acting."
No comments:
Post a Comment