Australia - Former PM Abbott Wants Country Out Of Paris Climate Accord

US President Donald Trump seems to have found the next domino in the long line of countries he wants to have alongside him to renegotiate the Paris Climate Accord (which the US pulled out of) now that former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who is of the same political party as current PM Malcolm Turnbull, told reporters that he would have never signed the deal three years ago if he had known the US would pull out.

His comments come on the eve of a new energy plan, entitled the National Energy Guarantee, being discussed in the Australian parliament.

Back in 2015, Mr. Abbott stated that Paris Climate Accord and its subsequent pledge was "responsible and achievable" as it had found "the right balance between our economic and environmental responsibilities."

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However, fast forward three years and with the US, the world’s largest consumer of energy, pulling out of the accord (when Mr Trump famously stated he was elected by the people of Pittsburgh and not Paris), Mr Abbott feels that exiting the multilateral agreement is "the best thing we can do right now."

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Time to pull out of Paris.<br>You can read the full speech here: <a href="https://t.co/aFSa7jcuJC">https://t.co/aFSa7jcuJC</a> <a href="https://t.co/h5QXA7HszK">pic.twitter.com/h5QXA7HszK</a></p>&mdash; Tony Abbott (@TonyAbbottMHR) <a href="https://twitter.com/TonyAbbottMHR/status/1014072725671854080?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 3, 2018</a></blockquote>

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"If we had known then what we know now about America's withdrawal, about the economic damage that renewable energy in particular would do to our power system and to our industries, we would never have signed up."

"And now that we do know, we should get out, simple as that."

However, current Foreign Minister Ms Julie Bishop, claims that Australia aims to stay in: "If we sign an agreement, we stick to the agreement."

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Nationals demand “a minimum of three” baseload power stations as the price of support for national energy guarantee <a href="https://t.co/TgZTD3LLQ4">https://t.co/TgZTD3LLQ4</a></p>&mdash; Ross Cameron (@RossCameron4) <a href="https://twitter.com/RossCameron4/status/1014377466528272384?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 4, 2018</a></blockquote>

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"Australia wants to be seen as a reliable and trusted global partner, we signed the Paris agreement, we can achieve the targets that we set, and they were deliberately set in a way that we could achieve them."

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Mr. Abbott claims a quote from Chief Scientist Alan Finkel explained his change of mind to withdraw Australia from the Paris Agreement. Dr. Finkel had stated that "nothing that Australia does to reduce emissions will make the slightest difference to climate," as it only emits 1.3 percent of global emissions.

Source:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-04/tony-abbott-says-pull-out-of-paris-climate-agreement/9937972