Australia tells Copenhagen Summit what it wants

News Com Au AUSTRALIA has told the Copenhagen summit it's time for "bold action'' on climate change.

"We want a success at Copenhagen, in fact we want a resounding success," Ms Hand said last night, to applause from the floor.

"We're committed to bold action, we're committed to a strong outcome."

"All governments have a responsibility to combat the threat of climate change."

The call to arms comes despite uncertainty about action at home, after the Liberal Opposition killed off the emissions trading scheme and elected Tony Abbott who's expressed doubts about climate science.

And the Copenhagen speech was made on behalf of some of the world's biggest economies.

Australia was speaking to the conference for the Umbrella Group, an informal arrangement of developed countries who are not from the European Union. The group includes the US, Japan and the Russian Federation.

Ms Hand, a senior Federal Government bureaucrat, said the Umbrella Group recognised the science that greenhouse gas emissions should halve by 2050 to limit global warming to two degrees.

The group's countries were ready to make that vision a reality by playing their full, fair part in a deal, she said.

"Copenhagen cannot be a business as usual outcome," Ms Hand said.

"All governments have a responsibility to combat the threat of climate change."

Greenpeace greets world leaders with age-old lesson

News Com Au IGNORE the science, go nuclear, think about working families - Australians have voiced their concerns about climate change and want their Prime Minister to listen up.

After two weeks of calling for comment, www.news.com.au has pulled together its Open Letter to Kevin Rudd from the People of Australia from hundreds of suggestions as to what we really want out of the two-week Copenhagen climate change summit which opens tonight in Denmark.

See the final draft of the Letter to Copenhagen from the People of Australia

There's even a request for some Copenhagen cheese among the final 50 selected, which are on their way to his office and will hopefully give the Prime Minister some food for thought in Copenhagen.

See the Greenpeace billboards - the World Leaders

Greenpeace have also planned a special message for Mr Rudd, giving him a shock preview of how he'll look in 2020 at Copenhagen International Airport.

It's commissioned a series of billboards featuring the world's leaders apologising in 2020 for their inaction on climate change in 2009.

Mr Rudd joins an aged US President Barack Obama, Germany's Angela Merkel and Brtain's Gordon Brown, looking mournful and claiming: "I'm sorry. We could have stopped catastrophic climate chage ... we didn't."

UN climate change Conference 2009, Copenhagen

U.N. officials, climate experts, environmental activists, and leaders of more than 100 nations gather in Copenhagen, Denmark for a two-week conference on climate change beginning 7 December.


The participants will try to reach a new international accord on reducing greenhouse gas emissions that would replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. But, questions remain about how much can be achieved and how any agreement would be implemented.