Climate change "off the G20 agenda" as Australia prepares to abolish carbon price

In the week that US president Obama announced major new carbon pollution regulations and China announced it would introduce a cap on carbon emissions by the end of the decade, climate change-denying Australia prime minister Tony Abbott has taken climate change of the G20 agenda.

Australia took over the chair of the G20 group of nations -- the 20 largest economies on earth -- in December. While this would normally be a moment of national pride, prime minister Abbott had lurched from one foreign policy gaffe to the next, compounding the ignominy with his morally negligent policy to abolish Australia's carbon price.

Abbott's wilful disregard for the risks of global warming come as Australia reached yet another landmark climate record: the Autumn (fall) month of May was unusually hot across the entire eastern seaboard of the continent. According to Sarah Perkins from the Climate Council:

With the exception of May 3, no daily maximum at Sydney's Observatory Hill has been below 20°C. So far, May's daily maximum temperatures have averaged just under 4°C above normal. May 25 was an exceptional 8°C warmer than normal.

The US is Australia's most important international ally, and traditionally conservative prime minister from the Liberal-National party, like Abbott's predecessor John Howard, have been in lock step with US administrations.

Howard for example famously supported the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, and followed Bush's lead by refusing to ratify the Kyoto protocol. (Recently Howard said that his "instinct" was that climate change was "exaggerated".)

In contrast, Abbott is showing no such deference to Democratic president Obama. So skeptical are the Australian public about Abbott's regard for the president, Twitter started trending with the hashtag #WhatAbbottwillsaytoObama; the vast majority of tweets are critiques of Abbott, and his climate policies are especially singled out.

Abbott's insistence that Obama's "direct action" policy is the equivalent to his own would be the public policy and diplomatic equivalent of Twitter-trolling if it weren't so serious.

Whereas president Obama proposes to significantly reduce carbon pollution emissions from power stations and achieve a 17 percent economy wide reduction in carbon emissions, Abbott proposes to pay major polluters to effectively keep polluting which is unlikely to achieve even the paltry 5 percent reduction target. President Obama has been advocating for a cap-and-trade laws (which were blocked by the Republicans); Abbott not only ran a four-year scare campaign against Australia's cap-and-trade laws, but now proposed to abolish them.

Global climate denialism has long been given mainstream airing, especially during the Bush years. Bush and his vice president Cheney were oil-men after all. However, the past six or so years have seen governments increasingly willing to take action, even while meaningful multilateral action is stymied by a small group of nations.

Abbott is ensuring that Australia rejoins that fringe group of nations, petro-states like Canada, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, who have snubbed or actively blocked multilateral attempts to reduce global emissions.

Australia aligned itself with nations like these at Warsaw in November last year during the COP 19 United Nations climate meeting; Abbott refused to send a minister to the talks and put forward no new commitments at the meeting. Back home, he derided climate action as "socialism masquerading as environmentalism".

During the World Economic Forum in Switzerland in December 2013, he said that adding climate change to the agenda of the G20 was "clutter". At the same time he attacked Climate Chief Christiana Figueres as "talking through her hat" for daring to suggest that Australia's unseasonal bush fires were related to global warming.

Canada, under Stephen Harper, is the only country in the world to have withdrawn from the Kyoto protocol, almost entirely due to the enormous and unseemly influence of the fossil fuel industry embodied by the tar-sands.

Australia, under Tony Abbott, is attempting to make Australia the first nation on earth to abolish a legislated price on carbon. His misguided and harmful climate denialism is now affecting other countries at these international forums.

These actions -- opposing the addition of climate change to the global agenda at the G20 meeting and abolishing the carbon price -- are morally negligent. The consequences of inaction on climate change are foreseeable, and doing nothing will result in real, substantial and long-lasting harm to the public.

What's worse, Abbott and his ministers have engaged in a relentless campaign to undermine and attack the credibility and legitimacy of climate science and scientists, with the intentional aim of undermining the moral case and public support for policy action.

The UN has endorsed a "carbon budget" of one trillion tonnes of carbon in order for the earth to stay below 2°C of warming. It is increasingly likely that the 2°C of warming was wildly optimistic and our carbon budget is in fact far lower than 1 trillion tonnes. Even to stay within the budget, global emissions would need to drop immediately.

Abbott's "direct action" plan, which no serious economist or scientist agrees will actually result in fewer emissions, combined with abolishing the carbon price, will actually worsen our "carbon budget".

Meanwhile, major fossil fuel companies like Shell, Chevron and Exxon are actually incorporating carbon pricing and caps into their long-term financial planning, despite lobbying furiously against those laws.

How Australia conducts itself at international forums, and in its interactions with the US and China on climate change, is of global importance. Australia, despite critics who claim our actions on climate can have no consequence, is one of the world's richest nations, and we are one of the largest polluters in the world and the largest per capita. Our impact lies not only in the technologies we produce and the commodities we export, but in the example we set to developing nations.

If Abbott continues to act as the stalking horse for global climate change deniers, he will not just weaken his own legitimacy as an international leader, but he may do long-lasting harm to Australia's position as a constructive middle-power.

Ignoring climate change, the biggest threat facing the world's economy, environment and population, is simply not a moral option for Tony Abbott, Australia or the G20. It would be a huge mistake for the prime minister to make.