Michael Mann: Smoke And Mirrors Provided By Morrison Gov Will Not Fool US Negotiators
One of the world’s most influential climate scientists Michael E Mann says John Kerry and US climate negotiators are not going to be “fooled by the smoke and mirrors the Morrison government appears to be employing to distract from their clear record of inaction on climate”. Joe Biden has invited 40 world leaders, including Scott Morrison, to a virtual summit on the climate crisis next week – an event coinciding with Earth Day.
Ahead of next week’s summit, Australia’s ambassador to the US, Arthur Sinodinos, said he had conveyed Australia’s desire to work with the US to promote investment in low-emissions technology to Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry. Sinodinos told Nine newspapers on Wednesday the Biden administration believed climate action was a “politically fraught issue” for Australia, but the Morrison government could “use that fact as a chance to explain why we’ve taken the approach we have to climate change and why policies such as carbon pricing and carbon taxation have fallen by the wayside”.
Mann, who is a distinguished professor of atmospheric science at PennState University, said the Morrison government seemed to be pursuing an approach of talking a better game on climate action in response to “the pressure coming from renewed American leadership on climate, while continuing to promote policies – such as a gas-led recovery – that do absolutely nothing to address the climate crisis in any meaningful way”.
But the American climatologist said Kerry had a detailed grasp of policy issues having “helped negotiate the successful bilateral agreement between the US and China during the Obama presidency which laid the foundation for the successful Paris agreement, which he also helped negotiate as secretary of state under Obama”.
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/apr/15/morrison-government-cant-conceal-inaction-on-climate-from-us-with-smoke-and-mirrors
