With the Bonn UN Climate Junket in its last days, the big leaders are coming in, and the ambit claims are coming out.
The Climate Action Network or CAN have published a glossy report that shows just what a failure Paris was. All the red countries are pretending to do something but scoring terribly. Grey countries are not even pretending, and New Zealand has been wiped off the map. (Seriously, something spooky happened in that last election.) Commiserations to Kiwi’s (UPDATE, and Alaskans).
Since India is getting the Green Guernsey and the US is getting a wrist slap, we know for sure this chart is not based on actual CO2 emission trends, or perhaps even any numbers.
The US, after all, has reduced emissions more than anywhere else while India is doubling it’s coal mining. Is that what we should aim for?
Australia, meanwhile, can never do enough, despite reducing our per capita emissions by a phenomenal 28% from 1990-2013. We sacrificed our electrical grids, have “implemented” an Emissions Trading Scheme and say we are aiming for the same obscenely tough 28% reduction that is the fashion despite being a heavy industrial quarry, with the lowest population density, biggest distances, and highest electricity costs in the world. To make it harder on ourselves the chief commodity we are disadvantaging happens to be our second largest export industry. Despite all this, CAN ranks Australia “Very low”.
The color red really means “squeeze more blood”.