Australia has signed on to the latest and expanded list of climate goals, a pledge celebrated at the world body’s New York headquarters with a luncheon of re-cycled “food that would have ended up in garbage bins” — a repository many might regard as appropriate for the agreement itself
Distracted by papal fanfare in New York City last week, few spotted the Trojan horse being rolled along the left bank of the East River. It moved quickly, perhaps aware the seven-hectare UN HQ complex at Manhattan’s Turtle Bay was once the site of a slaughter-house. Then, in a masterly piece of bureaucratic theatre — and subterfuge – its cargo of climate-justice warriors was delivered safely inside what inmates dryly call the Peace Factory, and all without so much as a media murmur.
Football fans following the finals series may have missed it, but last Friday a new UN initiative was agreed by 193 countries: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. They not only endorsed a 15-year commitment to end “poverty, hunger and inequality worldwide” — a piece of cake, surely, for minds such as these — but also issued a response to the “demand for leadership on climate change” alleged to be rising from “voices around the world”.