Abbott's G20 climate change moment - too little too late

A fascinating read about what happened behind the scenes at the G20, particularly the bit about Obama. In the end Obama completely outmaneuvered Abbott in the most graceful, yet forceful, of ways. Abbott was left completely humiliated, to the entire world. A fossil fool indeed.

So he's gone a bit green, but it's nothing really. Abbott is great at giving lip service to something whilst planning to do the opposite. Who the hell is going to believe a word he says about climate change efforts by his gov? Likely it will just be another smoke and mirrors attempt. If he was serious he'd stop trying to build a bloody great coal mine in the middle of the Reef.

For months leading up to what would be the biggest gathering of senior world leaders in Australian history, he had held out, refusing requests from the US and Europe, to list climate change on the agenda. 

Obama had remained the model of politeness. Privately, however, US sources say he was more than a little annoyed. His administration let it be known that the matter would come up around the G20 whether the host nation wanted it or not. 

What followed was as frontal a repudiation of the Abbott position as could have been imagined. In diplomatic terms, it was a triple touch-up. First on the eve of the Brisbane summit last Wednesday, Obama joined forces with China's President Xi Jinping to steal the pre-summit oxygen announcing a historic joint commitment to limit carbon dioxide output at lower levels and more quickly than previously committed to in both countries. 

Obama followed that up two days later on the Friday with a leaked commitment of $US3 billion to the Green Climate Fund – an international pool being assembled to finance climate change adaptation in poorer countries affected by climate change. Abbott had already dismissed the fund as socialism masquerading as environmentalism. 

And finally on the Saturday, the President used a scene-stealing speech at Brisbane's University of Queensland to elevate climate policy even further, formally announcing that $US3 billion pledge and openly calling for countries - Australian specifically as a large per-capita polluter – to do more. He wanted to keep the Great Barrier Reef even if the Abbott government did not. Read more