Paris Agreement Paves Way For A Safer Climate

Australian Conservation Foundation

The climate change agreement in Paris creates a pathway towards a safer climate for all life on Earth.
The agreement includes:

• Commitment to limit global warming to well below 2°C, and pursue efforts to limit temperature increase to 1.5°C
• a long term goal of zero net greenhouse pollution in the second half of the century
• establishment of a system to enable increased pollution cuts through five-year reviews of pollution reduction targets, with the first review in 2018
• establishment of a system to regularly increase financial contributions to help the world's poorest countries  cut pollution and cope with global warming impacts.

For the first time in history all countries have agreed to limit pollution and create a pathway towards a safer climate.  This agreement in Paris signals the end of the fossil fuel age and will turbo charge the clean energy revolution already underway.
These talks are not an end point, but they are a tipping point.  The world must now accelerate the switch from coal to renewables, protect carbon-storing forests, boost energy efficient transport and buildings and create the economies and jobs of the future.
This agreement is a big, positive step, but what's most important is what leaders do when they get home.
Our government talked innovation here in Paris, but at home it continues to subsidise inefficient, dirty coal companies and still plans to dismantle renewable energy agency ARENA and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
In Paris our government talked up renewables, but at home is approving new coal mines.
If Adani's Carmichael coal mine – recently approved by the Turnbull Government – goes ahead, the pollution resulting from that single project will almost entirely wipe out Australia's pollution reduction commitments here in Paris.
ACF urges Prime Minister Turnbull to bring the momentum and goodwill of Paris into Australia's 2016 election year by making genuine changes that will unshackle our country from dirty energy and pave the way for a truly innovative, renewable future.

Links

• Adani meeting shows mining magnates have too much influence
• Paris talks expose Australian climate hypocrisy
• PM talks the talk on climate, but action speaks louder than words
• Australia's neo-colonial sophistry holding back progress in Paris