A group of Pacific leaders is threatening to ‘upend the chessboard’ while Australia plays strategy with China in the region while not addressing climate change.
Pacific leaders are warning the Albanese government it must raise its climate goals or risk harming Australia’s security ties to the region, following an alarming forecast that global warming will almost certainly exceed a crucial temperature limit within the next five years.on Wednesday warned there was a 98 per cent chance that at least one of the next five years would exceed an annual average global temperature of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
However, the government is failing this goal. Its target to cut emissions by 43 per cent by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050 is“Crossing the 1.5 degree threshold means people from low-lying island countries like mine will face significant challenge to their lands, livelihoods and survivability,” former Republic of Marshall Islands president Hilda Cathy Heine told this masthead.
“Australia has a clear desire to deepen its engagement in the Pacific and give meaning to the narrative of a regional ‘family’. This can’t happen without responding to our greatest threat – the climate crisis – including by prioritising a real, just and equitable phase-out of coal, oil and gas.”The letter said Australia and China’s strategic focus on the region made people “feel less like players and more like the chessboard”.
The government made an election promise to bring the UN’s international climate talks – known as COP – to the Pacific region and has formally lodged a bid for the talks in 2026, with the backing of Pacific nations.
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