Greens MPs

This piece by Christine ran in Crikey's email today.

Late in August, while the Business Council of Australia was making its ambit claim to limit Australia's emissions reductions to no more than 10% cuts by 2020, the famous North-west Passage around the north of Canada opened.

A few days later, just as Martin Ferguson was circulating his "softened" emissions trading proposal to big polluters, the North-east passage, around Russia, also opened.

Both these historically and strategically significant events have occurred individually in recent years as the Arctic summer ice has progressively melted. But this is the first time in human history that both passages have been open simultaneously, making the North Polar ice cap an island, and the consequences are far-reaching.

The Australian media has largely spruiked the Bali COP (Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) as a success but this doesn't at all match the feeling of defeat and despondency that I and many others felt in Bali last Sunday - the day after the meeting finally closed.

So they reached an agreement. Until a couple of hours ago, what that agreement actually said depended on whether you read the Murdoch or Fairfax press, since the UNFCCC hadn't bothered to put the text of the agreements on their website. It's now available here.

A fascinating shift in Bali overnight, with the new Opposition Environment Spokes, Greg Hunt, giving the Government the 'green light', as he puts it, to sign up to the Bali agreement with the 2020 targets in!

Belated greetings and postings from Bali, where there was genuine excitement and warm good will last week when the new Government announced its decision to ratify the Kyoto Protocol immediately and rejoin the global effort to tackle climate change.

Somehow this seems even more unreal and extraordinary than last Saturday night. Australia is once again part of the Kyoto process!

So, finally, both the Government and Opposition have come to the party on what the rest of the world agreed to at Rio 15 years ago - that developed and developing countries should have differentiated responsibilities in any international climate agreement.