Australian PM criticises climate change 'deniers'

Updated November 6, 2009 20:48:03

Regional leaders will head to Singapore this weekend for the APEC meeting, and among them will be Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. The Australian leader is engaged in a domestic political battle over carbon reduction legislation. Australia was among developed nations heavily criticised by African leaders at this week's UN climate change talks in Barcelona. Today Mr Rudd used a speech to the Lowy Institute for International Affairs in Sydney to restate his government's climate change credentials, and to savage climate change deniers.

Presenter: Linda Mottram, Canberra Correspondent
Speakers: Kevin Rudd, Australian Prime Minister; Lumumba Di'Aping, African nations chief climate negotiator

MOTTRAM: Mr Rudd's Lowy Institute speech was billed as an address on Australia's challenges in the region and the world, but it zeroed in on just one of those - climate change - and specifically climate change deniers.

RUDD: They are a minority. They are powerful. And invariably they are driven by vested interests. Powerful enough to so far block domestic legislation in Australia, powerful enough to so far slow down the passage of legislation through the Congress of the United States. And ultimately, by limiting the ambition of national climate change commitments, they are powerful enough to threaten a deal on global climate change both in Copenhagen and beyond.

MOTTRAM: Mr Rudd's message was partly domestic. In just over three weeks, his government will try for a second time to get a centrepiece of its climate change response through the hostile Australian upper house - the Senate. Mr Rudd named and quoted a slew of climate change deniers from the political opposition, the Liberal and National Parties, and their commentator supporters. And there was copious colourful rhetoric.

RUDD: The tentacles of the climate change skeptics reach deep into the ranks of the Liberal Party, and once you add the National party, it's plain the skeptics and the deniers are a major force.

MOTTRAM: Mr Rudd said his government was committed to action - to protect the future of our children and grand-children as he put it. He said climate change would be a critical question for the APEC leaders meeting in Singapore next week. And he talked up the willingness of a key developing countries, China, to contribute to a global agreement.

RUDD: With both President Hu Jintao, with Premier Wen Jiabao, most recently we had vice premier Li Keqiang in Australia. We've had extensive conversations on this subject, and my own response to the Chinese leaders, and sense of where the Chinese leaders want to go, is that China wishes to play a strong and positive role in getting an outcome in Copenhagen and beyond.

MOTTRAM: Mr Rudd said he sensed the same from India, where he'll visit next week ahead of APEC. But the climate deniers he says are putting at risk the political will of the developed world, and thus eroding the prospect of what Mr Rudd calls the grand bargain that's needed between the developed and developing worlds.

RUDD: The roll-on consequences is that our friends in New Delhi and Beijing now look at this and say, well if there is collapsing ambition there, what therefore can we justify to our own domestic constituencies given the enormous development challenges that we face within China and within India.

MOTTRAM: His portrayal of himself as a climate champion though doesn't impress Africa. This week, at one of the final pre-Copenhagen negotiations held in Barcelona, the main African negotiator, Somalia's Lumumba Di'Aping, cast doubt on a phrase that's crept into the climate change discussion - the prospect of a politically binding, rather than legally binding agreement.

DI'APING: If there is anything that you know about politics and political manifestos, etcetera, is that they are worth very little. Tell me of any politician who delivered on his political manifesto. Is it Gordon Brown, is it Kevin Rudd?

MOTTRAM: And before leading a walkout a boycott of the talks by African nations, Lumumba Di'Aping effectively rejected the Rudd emissions targets for Australia, the world's largest per capita carbon emitter.

DI'APING: You have to lift to the ambition that saves the world, in Africa's words it is 40, minimum.

MOTTRAM: That is, 40 per cent of 1990 emissions by 2020. Mr Rudd's target for Australia is 25 per cent by 2020, but only if there's a global agreement. And if there's not, its just five per cent by 2020, miniscule alongside African and Pacific demands. Still if APEC leaders next week agree to the draft communique calling for 50 per cent cuts by 2050, Mr Rudd may be able to finesse that as support for his approach, since Australia's targets also state there'll be cuts of 60 per cent in Australia by 2050.

All the talk around the meetings though is that Copenhagen is on target to fail to reach its stated aim of a new global climate change deal. And China's special climate change negotiator, Yu Qingtai has repeatedly pointed the finger at the developed nations for lacking political will.