Energy minister Angus Taylor says the climate change focus should be on China not Australia
Politicians and climate activists around the world have failed to focus on in the quest to reduce global emissions, according to Angus Taylor. The federal energy minister pointed out that China accounts for almost a third of global greenhouse gas emissions while Australia releases about 1.2 per cent. Mr Taylor said politicians at the COP26 summit in last month were too focussed on reducing emissions in developed nations while China didn't even show up to the talks. 'Part of the issue here is people not identifying what the underlying facts are,' he told broadcaster Alan Jones on his new online show . 'I mean just under a third of global emissions now are coming from China and we're responsible for just over one per cent as you know. 'And yet the debate revolves around countries like Australia.' Mr Taylor said activists and pro-climate politicians want to destroy fossil fuel industries which are a major part of Australia's economy with coal and gas among the nation's top exports. 'Now the truth of the matter is that if China is a third of emissions and emissions are the problem then China should be a very significant part of the focus. 'But we didn't see that at COP, we don't see that in the debate more generally. It's an opportunity to try and destroy industries that people don't like,' he said. 'People don't like our mining industry, they don't like our agriculture.' Mr Taylor said Australia refused to sign up to a pledge to phase down the coal industry to keep global temperature rises as close to 1.5C as possible because developing nations in Asia will want Australia's coal for decades to come. 'We're not going to shut down these industries while customers still want to buy them,' he said. 'If we said tomorrow ''we're going to shut down the coalmines'' Indonesia would expand their exports, and China would still use as much coal, in fact it would be dirtier coal than Australian coal,' he said. Earlier this year a report by US research institute Rhodium Group found that China accounts for 27 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than all developed nations combined. The US produced 11 per cent, India 6.6 per cent and the EU including the UK 6.4 per cent. China has committed to net zero by 2060 instead of 2050 like many other nations including Australia. Last week US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said he believed pressure would grow on China to offer 'something fundamentally more ambitious' in the fight against climate change. 'In the months coming out of COP26, I think the focus will shift and the pressure will grow on China to come to the table with something fundamentally more ambitious than what they have put on the table so far,' he said at event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations think tank. 'I don't say that in some kind of competitive way, or challenging way, or threatening way, just the reality is that the only way to solve this problem - for China, as well as for the rest of the world - is for that country to step up more. There are other countries that will have to as well.' China is responsible for more than half of global coal-fired power generation and is expected to see a nine per cent year-on-year increase in 2021, the International Energy Agency said on Friday. China has already made a pledge to start reducing coal consumption, but will do so only after 2025, giving developers considerable leeway to raise generation capacity further in the coming four years. At the Glasgow summit, China and the United States made a joint declaration committing to ramp up their cooperation on climate change as well as their own national plans.