Australia, and those leaders who argue that we are too small to matter in the global climate change debate, just got a rotten report card, and it highlights the impact we are having.
Each year the Climate Action Network and GermanWatch organisations produce a detailed index on the worlds nations and how they are progressing (or otherwise) towards reducing emissions. The index uses a broad range of components to develop weighted scores and includes:
- Emissions level
- Development of emissions
- Renewable Energy
- Efficiency
- Policy
The fifty-eight countries covered by the index represent just over 85% of all Global CO2 emissions and 71% of the world’s population. So it’s a chunk.
“Its their fault, where are only small” our Luddite leaders cry. Really, really?
Australia is ranked as the 14th largest emitter of CO2 in the world. At 1.18% of global emissions, the small part is true but our relative importance in the rankings makes our behavior substantially more important I would suggest. Put another way, almost 76% of the other countries surveyed emit less than Australia, many of them are far more populous and no, they aren’t all poverty-stricken deserts.
If someone was responsible for allocating pocket-money or Christmas gifts for a Nation based on this report card, I suspect we just lost ours.
“Dear Cobber; your report card is very, very disappointing this year. Of your 58 peers, you ranked 54th Cobber, 54th. On our maps of specific performance you ranked “very poor” on four out of the six maps and “poor” on the remainder.We are utterly perplexed that such a bright, well endowed and relatively well off child would throw their future away with such a result which just wreaks of chronic laziness and apathy. This is not the first time we have had this type of conversation either, is it Cobber? You do realise that your score got WORSE this year don’t you? You ranked in position 48 last year and have dropped 6 places.
I’ve called your dad, he’s on the way to the office to meet with us.”
Indeed.
Here’s how we looked:
Post expires at 12:42pm on Thursday November 19th, 2015
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