Greenpeace to 'Coal Pact' delegates: Prove how you'll reduce emissions
Sydney Wednesday, 11 January, 2006 : US and Australian delegates attending today’s Asia-Pacific climate conference in
Sydney are trying to ‘hoodwink’ the public by claiming that voluntary agreements to make coal cleaner would be all we
need to tackle climate change, Greenpeace said today.
Greenpeace clean energy campaign leader, Catherine Fitzpatrick, said “It appears that, as we had feared, this conference
is all about protecting the coal industry and not about taking serious action to tackle climate change.
“From the little anyone has been told of the details of this pact, there will be no binding arrangements to reduce
pollution, no targets and no timelines.”
“Minister Macfarlane's claims that this pact will reduce emissions three times more than Kyoto will are impossible to
justify when the pact currently requires no action whatsoever. Anyone tempted to believe the Minister must ask him to
prove how the emissions reductions will be achieved.”
“Talk is cheap and the price of inaction is expensive. Voluntary measures have been demonstrated to be utterly
ineffective. Simply relying on the good will of industry and promoting business-as-usual cannot ensure that we will
reduce pollution at all, let alone enough to tackle climate change.”
“The dirty black fingerprints of the coal industry all over this pact. The pact's focus on 'technology' to tackle
climate change seems to mean only the dangerous and unproven 'geosequestration', not clean renewable energy technologies
such as solar, geothermal, wind and energy efficiency.”
“Even if geosequestration can be proven to work, it will still cause greenhouse pollution, meaning it cannot be used to
meet growing energy needs if we are to cut emissions.”
“Conference delegates are well aware that renewable energy technologies already exist, are ready to be implemented on a
massive scale, will generate jobs and investment and is already growing fast around the world, thanks to the Kyoto
Protocol.”
“By setting targets, Kyoto has already encouraged investment in cleaner technologies and is already reducing greenhouse
pollution. The Australian and US Governments should stop this PR exercise and join the world in the Kyoto Protocol.”