Letter

In response to The Paris Agreement is dead. Australia must change its strategic priorities

Pathway to Paris

Optimists still argue that the Paris Agreement is not dead. We heard them at Dubai, repeating over and over that we must keep 1.5 alive. But what if the odds dont favour the Dunlop/Spratt double saviour solution? A study done recently by Professor Jacqueline Peel of the Melbourne Law School for the Climate Council discusses some of the stumbling blocks which litter Australias pathway to observance of Paris. The main one is our failure to recognise climate change as a matter of national environmental significance (MNES) in association with the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Protection Act. Is it too late for us to pick ourselves up from that one? Perhaps the combined wisdom of the Australian voter will soon be ready to accept that climate change is indeed a matter of national, as well as global, environmental significance.

— John Gare from Kew East, Victoria