Climate 'Partnership' a Con Job
Friends of the Earth, Australia (FoEA) rejects the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate as a
thinly-veiled attempt by some of the world's worst greenhouse polluters to destroy the Kyoto Protocol.
Michelle Braunstein, FoEA climate campaigner, said: "The Asia-Pacific Partnership is led by the two Kyoto renegade
states, the US and Australia, which are respectively the world's worst greenhouse polluter and the worst per capita
polluter. The Partnership contains no binding commitments to reduce greenhouse emissions. Instead, we expect more
subsidies for dubious and expensive technologies like 'clean coal' and perhaps also nuclear power, while true clean
solutions like renewables are left to languish."
"The Howard government has refused to expand the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target and it has cut funding to renewable
energy research such as the complete withdrawal of funding from the Co-operative Research Centre for Renewable Energy."
"The Asia-Pacific Partnership documents vaguely refer to 'development and poverty reduction' yet just last week the
Howard government refused to endorse Labor's commitment to accepting climate refugees," Braunstein said.
FoEA nuclear campaigner Jim Green said: "The Asia-Pacific Partnership meeting will most likely be used to promote
nuclear power, the slowest, most expensive and most dangerous of all climate change abatement strategies. Nuclear power
is the only energy source with a direct connection to WMD. Australian uranium has led to the production of enough
plutonium to build over 8,000 nuclear weapons and in November the so-called Australian Safeguards and Non-proliferation
Office acknowledged that there is a risk of diversion of Australian uranium for weapons production."
An October 2005 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency revealed that the wave of pro-nuclear propaganda to
which Australians have been subjected has done little to swing public opinion. The IAEA survey of 1,020 Australians
found that: 60% of Australians want no new nuclear power plants or the closure of all nuclear power plants as soon as
possible; 56% of Australians consider the IAEA's 'safeguards' inspection system to be ineffective; and 53% of
Australians believe there is a high risk of a nuclear-related terrorist attack. In the same month, a Morgan poll found
that 70% of Australians oppose any expansion of the Australian uranium mining industry.
ENDS