Gore backs Australia on climate change

Yahoo News 13 Jul 09;

MELBOURNE (AFP) – High-profile climate change campaigner Al Gore on Monday backed Australia's environmental policies and said this year's devastating brushfires were a savage reminder of the need to act.

The former US presidential candidate, in Melbourne to launch the Safe Climate Australia think-tank, said Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had shown the environment was a top priority.

"In my country we have a new president and in only 30 days after taking office (he) was able to pass in the US Congress 80 billion dollars for renewable energy and for green infrastructure," Gore said.

"Your new leadership 18 months on here in Australia has done something similar."

Gore had earlier praised Rudd for pushing ahead with emissions trading legislation before a UN climate change conference takes place in Copenhagen in December.

Rudd also won plaudits from environmentalists by signing Australia up to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming as one of his first acts as prime minister.

Gore said Australia's worst ever brushfires, which were fanned by record temperatures and left 173 people dead, offered evidence that the planet had a "fever."

"It's difficult to ignore the fact that cyclones are getting stronger, that the fires are getting bigger, that the sea level is rising, that the refugees are beginning to move from places they have long called home," Gore said.

"The odds have been shifted so heavily that fires that used to be manageable now threaten to spin out of control and wreak damages that are far beyond what was experienced in the past."

Gore urges Australia to lead global warming fight
Yahoo News 15 Jul 09;

SYDNEY (AFP) – Climate campaigner Al Gore has challenged Australia to lead the fight against global warming, saying it was well placed to find alternative energy sources.

The former US vice president met Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Sydney to discuss progress on cutting greenhouse gas emissions and reaching renewable energy targets ahead of a UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December.

"Australia is in the line of fire where the climate crisis is concerned, no nation is more vulnerable to the impact scientists have predicted," said Gore, at a joint press conference.

"And no nation has greater renewable energy resources and a greater capacity to develop alternative sources of energy and contribute to a solution for the climate crisis," he added.

Rudd, who was elected on a strongly pro-green platform in 2007 and ratified the Kyoto Protocol as his first act in office, said Gore was "absolutely right."

"Australia is the driest continent on Earth," Rudd said. "Therefore the impact of climate change here will be felt earlier and harder than in all other continents in the world, that's the bottom line.

"We have a huge national interest in action on climate change, which is as much environmental as it is economic."

Gore said he chose to be "optimistic about the possibility of a successful outcome at Copenhagen," and urged heads of state to meet personally ahead of the December summit to resolve the political impasse.

"We're making progress, there was a bit of progress at (the recent G8 summit in) L'Aquila and there's been progress here in Australia and in my country," said Gore.

Leaders of the G8 countries, which together account for 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, last week set a goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial levels.

But they failed to spell out how they would achieve this vision or break a deadlock on helping emerging countries meet the climate challenge.

Rudd in May committed to cutting Australia's greenhouse gas emissions to 25 percent of 2000 levels by 2020, up from five percent.

But he said the target would only apply if world leaders also signed up to an "ambitious" reduction goal in Copenhagen in December.