Australia is set to ratify the second part of Kyoto Protocol

About 6000 people attended a march that started on the front lawns of Parliament House in Canberra on Sunday.

“The main message here in Australia is that we want to move to 100 per cent clean homegrown energy as fast as possible and we want to see an end to dirty fossil fuels”. “In Australia in recent years, the climate policy conversation has become highly polarised”, he stated.

Environment minister Greg Hunt said this morning that “Australia will ratify Kyoto II with the support of the cabinet and party room”.

“Australia’s government is saying is we’re not Tony Abbott, but the truth of the matter is we’ve still got Tony Abbot’s policies”, says Bill Shorten in Paris. We can not afford to delay action through petty politics.

A long-time observer of the climate negotiations, Deputy Chief Executive of the Climate Institute Erwin Jackson, said the decision by Australia to ratify the second phase of Kyoto was meaningful and would given Australian business access to global carbon markets.

Mr Turnbull and his opposite number Bill Shorten are in Paris for the United Nations climate talks.

The Authority, set up by the former Labor government but mostly shunned by the current administration, released the second of three reports planned on future climate policy options.

“Malcolm Turnbull is going to Paris with Tony Abbott’s policies – he stopped on the way to lecture other leaders about them doing more, when we’re actually doing less”, she said.

“That’s what Labor has done in developing our pledge to take a policy to the next election of net zero pollution by 2050”.

“But our task, and that of the technologies we deploy, is not just to reduce emissions”, Turnbull said. While the government has promised a 26-28% reduction by 2030, the Prime Minister said ahead of the talks that he wanted a “strong a durable commitment”.

Parr said the governemnt’s current policy, the Emissions Reduction Fund, was inadequate.

“Reaching a 45pc reduction in 2030 is unrealistic policy and hinders efforts to feed and clothe a growing world”.

“This would allow for carbon reduction without weakening the agricultural sector’s competitiveness”.

“The ACT is increasingly recognised as a leader internationally in terms of its greenhouse gas abatements and its renewable energy targets and I will be participating in a broad range of events created to highlight what is happening at the sub-national government level”, the minister said.

“The UN has for the first time actively sought the involvement of subnational governments as part of the COP21 [Conference of the Parties] discussion”, he said. It comes as Palmer United Party bash leader Clive Palmer, who secured the assessment last yr in exchange for supporting the authorities’s arguable Direct Action plan, stated the Climate Change Authority strayed from its original temporary to exclusively look at emissions trading schemes.