Australia joins US, China and Russia in refusing to sign leaders' pledge on biodiversity.

Scott Morrison declined as 10-point plan calls for commitments considered inconsistent with government policy

The Morrison government has said it refused to sign a global pledge endorsed by 64 countries committing them to reverse biodiversity loss because it was inconsistent with Australia’s policies.

Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Justin Trudeau, Jacinda Ardern and Boris Johnson are among world leaders who signed the Leaders’ pledge for nature which was launched on Monday ahead of a major UN summit on biodiversity being hosted virtually from New York. The summit is working towards a Paris-style global agreement on nature.

The federal government was invited to sign but refused because the 10-point plan calls for commitments that are inconsistent with Australian policy – including a greater ambition to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and reach net zero emissions by 2050.

A spokesman for Morrison said: “Australia has already committed to a net zero emissions target by the second half of the century as set out in the Paris agreement.”

“We will not agree to other targets unless we can tell the Australian people what they will cost to achieve and how we will achieve it,” he said. The spokesman said “we want to achieve net zero emissions as soon as possible” and pointed to the government’s recently released technology roadmap.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/29/australia-joins-us-china-and-russia-in-refusing-to-sign-leaders-pledge-on-biodiversity

Explore some of Australia's most iconic and fascinating animals. From mysterious orca to the iconic kangaroo, intelligent parrots and the secret lives of reptiles, all have evolved to survive across the Australian landscape.

https://iview.abc.net.au/show/australia-remastered-wild-australians

Simply brilliant...

British broadcaster Sir David Attenborough is leading a call from conservation groups for the world to invest $US500 billion ($A700 billion) a year to halt the destruction of nature.

Sir David, whose latest film documents the dangers posed by climate change and the extinction of species, issued the call as the United Nations convened a one-day summit aimed at galvanising action to protect wildlife.

“Our natural world is under greater pressure now than at any time in human history, and the future of the entire planet – on which every single one of us depends – is in grave jeopardy,” Sir David, 94, said in a statement on Thursday (Australian time).

“We still have an opportunity to reverse catastrophic biodiversity loss, but time is running out.”

Opening the summit in New York, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that a million species were at risk of extinction and that climate change and the loss of biodiversity were “destroying earth’s web of life”.

“We are part of that fragile web and we need it to be healthy so we and future generations may thrive,” Mr Guterres said.

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2020/10/01/david-attenborough-un-summit-climate-change/

Meanwhile:

For nearly three decades, mainstream American news outlets duped the public on climate change by publishing significantly more news stories that denied climate science compared to those that said it was occurring, according to a recent study.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research helps explain why the American public remains bitterly divided on the issue of climate change, and why climate change policymaking in the United States is often stalled. It also puts into sharp relief the corporate control over mainstream media that for decades has fueled anti-science bias and prioritized corporate profiteering over communicating the urgency for climate action.

“The messages opposing action to address climate change are about twice as likely to receive newspaper coverage as messages advocating for climate action.”

                       RACHEL WETTS

Rachel Wetts, an assistant professor of Environment and Society at Brown University’s Department of Sociology, led the study, which analyzed nearly three decades of climate change-related press releases and national news articles published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. She also evaluated thousands of press releases from businesses, advocacy organizations, scientific researchers, trade organizations, and the public sector, published between 1985-2013 to assess whether they supported or opposed climate action.

Read more:

https://therealnews.com/how-corporate-media-helps-fossil-fuel-industry-dupe-american-public

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