Britain’s prime minister, deputy prime minister and leader of the opposition have made a joint declaration on climate change: “Climate change is one of the most serious threats facing the world today. It is not just a threat to the environment, but also to our national and global security, to poverty eradication and economic prosperity.”
Calls for Australia and New Zealand to follow suit echo the calls from Wise Response for cross-party commitment to climate change action.
Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt has called on Australia’s political parties to follow Britain’s example by striking a joint pledge to urgently tackle climate change.
In New Zealand, author Ryan Mearns, of Generation Zero has urged New Zealand politicians to make the same commitment.
As reported in the Guardian, Britain’s Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour leaders have pledged “to seek a fair, strong, legally binding, global climate deal which limits temperature rises to below 2C” – which is the safe level agreed upon by climate scientists to avoid dangerous global warming.
The pledge also made a commitment to work across party lines, to agree on carbon budgets in accordance with the Climate Change Act and accelerate the transition to a competitive low-carbon economy.
Similarly, Switzerland announced they were committed to cutting their emissions by 50 percent of 1990 levels come 2030.