Australia seen as 'public enemy No.1' on climate, Peter Doherty says

Dan Harrison Health and Indigenous Affairs Correspondent

Nobel Laureate Peter Doherty says Australia is being seen internationally as "public enemy number one" on climate change and risks being isolated as China seeks to reduce its reliance on coal.

Professor Doherty, who is in Hong Kong for an Asia Society symposium on making cities more sustainable, said there was a perception that Australia was not playing a constructive role in the lead-up to the United Nations climate change conference in Paris later this year, which many see as the world's "last best chance" for global action to reduce carbon emissions.

"Australia is being regarded as public enemy number one," said Professor Doherty, who won the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine in 1996.

"That's a statement that's been made to me by a couple of people – so that's obviously a kind of buzz that's going around the climate change community."

He said the Abbott government seemed to have "firmly popped themselves into the climate change denial camp".

"I don't know if that's necessarily the position of the Environment Minister [Greg Hunt] but you can't say that you accept the realities of climate change and then want to maximise the sale of coal - it just doesn't make sense."

He said Australia had gone from being seen as a global leader in addressing climate change under the former Labor Government, to being "behind the game," under Mr Abbott's leadership.

He said he was concerned Australia could be isolated internationally as China reduced its reliance on coal and made greater use of solar, wind and nuclear power.

"What worries me is that Australia will kind of be seen as the fall guy for this – the guys that didn't do anything and really behaved irresponsibly – and we're pretty vulnerable."

"I would worry about tariff barriers, that's being discussed – you wouldn't want to put Australia in that position."

Professor Doherty attacked the government for its decision to allocate $4 million to establish a think tank headed by "sceptical environmentalist" Bjorn Lomborg.

"It's in character, but it's a pretty extraordinary thing to do, after all the talk about the need to constrain resources," Professor Doherty said.

"To hand our that sort of money, presumably on the basis of no peer review whatever for what is really a blatantly political exercise – well, you know they're the government and they can do it, but it certainly doesn't cause you to have any great respect for them."

He said Australia needed to do more to foster the use of renewable energy and sustainable building technologies, and said massive continued urbanisation in Asia offered enormous opportunities for Australian companies that excelled in these fields.

"The next revolution is to make the industrial society work in a way that's sustainable within the boundaries of our planetary resources," he said.

"It can be done, but you have to have the will, and you have to engage with it, you don't turn your back on it and say this is nasty for us, it has to go away."

"There's this perception that we can just hold on to the world as it was, and I don't think the world is ever like that."

"You can't hold on to the world as it was, it's gone"

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/australia-seen-as-public-enemy-no1-on-climate-peter-doherty-says-20150425-1mt5fe.html