BERLIN: Australia is joining the “climate club” backed by the Group of Seven major economies to take more ambitious action in tackling global warming, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Monday.
The club was first proposed by Nobel Prize winner William Nordhaus as a way of getting countries to voluntarily set high targets for curbing climate change and then require trading partners to meet those same standards. Such moves are opposed by major emerging economies like China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gas.
“We’re very pleased to join the climate club because we are ambitious and we also see that this isn’t just the right thing to do by the environment, but this is also the right thing to do by jobs and by our economy,” Albanese said at a news conference in Berlin after meeting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who made the idea a key pillar of his G7 presidency last year.
“One thing we can do is to cooperate and learn off each other, because you can’t address climate change as just a national issue. It has to be by definition, a global response,” Albanese said.
Albanese’s government committed last year to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 43 percent by the end of the decade — almost double the previous target. In March, Parliament passed a law requiring Australia’s biggest greenhouse gas polluters reduce their emissions or pay for carbon credits.
Other countries that have joined the climate club include Argentina, Chile, Denmark, Indonesia, Colombia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Singapore and Uruguay.
Australia joins G7-backed ‘climate club’ and promises to drive down greenhouse gas emissions
https://arab.news/r672g
Australia joins G7-backed ‘climate club’ and promises to drive down greenhouse gas emissions
Intense heat wave grips Australia, fans bushfires
- Communities evacuate as authorities warn of ‘catastrophic’ danger
SYDNEY: Uncontrolled fires burned through bushland in the Australian state of Victoria on Thursday, forcing communities to evacuate and authorities to warn of a “catastrophic” fire danger rating for Friday.
Amid temperatures that exceeded 40 degrees Celsius in parts of the state, two large bushfires were raging near the towns of Longwood and Walwa.
The fires have destroyed at least two structures and are expected to continue to spread on Friday as heat and wind pick up, authorities said.
The Longwood fire has grown to more than 25,000 hectares in size, while the Walwa fire is 10,000 hectares and has created its own weather system, with a pyrocumulonimbus cloud causing lightning and thunder. Residents in dozens of neighboring towns have been told to evacuate.
Friday’s fire danger rating will be set at “catastrophic,” the highest level, and both fires pose a real risk of loss of life and property, authorities said.
“Tomorrow is a very, very dire bushfire day in the state of Victoria,” Country Fire Authority Chief Officer Jason Heffernan told a news conference.
The bushfires come amid an intense summer heat wave in Australia’s south.
Meteorologists have said conditions are on par with 2019, when bushfires destroyed wide swathes of southeastern Australia, killing 33 people, in what became known as the Black Summer.
Some 450 schools in Victoria are set to close on Friday and many regional train services will be canceled.
For Thursday, total fire bans have been issued in several districts. A total fire ban will be imposed across the whole state on Friday.
In New Zealand, the country’s weather provider, MetService, also warned of record warm temperatures over the weekend as the heat wave moves across the Tasman Sea.
It has issued heat alerts for parts of the eastern coast of New Zealand and the north of the South Island.
