The following world leaders are among the 90 or so confirmed, or highly likely, to attend in Egypt this week the COP27 conference — where world leaders gather to discuss carbon emissions and how to tackle climate change:
- President of the United States Joe Biden
- President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen
- Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Rishi Sunak
- President of France Emmanuel Macron
- President of Senegal Macky Sall
- Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte
- President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
- Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley
- First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon
- Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sánchez
- Prime Minister of Denmark Mette Frederiksen
- Incoming President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
- Prime Minister of Italy Giorgia Meloni
Spotted any notable absentees? Australian Prime Minster Anthony Albanese has taken the same tack as Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping: opting not to attend. He’s instead sending Minister for the Pacific Pat Conroy and Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen in his place. Of course, in some ways the PM can’t win — he copped some fairly naff criticism in his early days in office for spending too much time overseas, and he’s also got ASEAN, Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation, and G20 meetings, all occurring overseas, to keep him busy. Still, the first COP since Labor took office would have been a good time to conclusively break with the embarrassment of the Morrison government’s approach to climate change on the world stage, and it’s odd Albanese chose not to take advantage of that.
The PM came to power on the basis that he would run a Westminster style cabinet. This means that power and authority are devolved to qualified ministers. The notion that the PM should attend everything just to suit a media inspired trope of presidential exceptionalism is either intellectually lazy, a bit childish, or both. It won’t affect our bid to host a future COP because Chris Bowen & Pat Conroy will do a good job in Cairo!
Maybe so, but the electorate have been fed a steady diet of presidential style government for quite some time now. Hard for them to readjust this quickly. And there’s a lot of angry people out there. People who voted the LNP out rather than Labor in. People who gave Labor their preference, but not and never their primary vote. People did that because things were dire and Labor offered change. One of the things people wanted to see change was how seriously the government takes climate change. These people are already describing the Albanese government as worse than Morrison’s because they believe things haven’t changed at all and all the “Labor cares” and “no one left behind” stuff was a lie.
I think he should have gone. Yes, it’s an empty “blah, blah” fest- Greta Thunberg’s right- but it’s the look of the thing to an angry electorate.
The ALP lost the 2019 election because the electorate rejected the clear comprehensive climate change actions which were offered. They won the 2022 election with a minimum majority & a relatively low primary vote. There are still many in the electorate who have not embraced the need to act on climate change. If the government is to remain in power so that it can enact serious long term change it needs to move at a pace which will persuade the sceptics and bring them along.
Rapid and disruptive change will not achieve this. It will only provoke more wasted years of pointless argument & indecision.
They have only been in 5 months . The many changes they need to make will take longer if they are to be accepted as long term solutions. We all need to cool our heels and stop being sucked in by toxic narrative of the media
The Australian Government wants to bid to host the COP in a year or two ‘s time. But the bid will sink without a trace if our PM doesn’t even deign to turn up.
COP is in Egypt and there is going to be much more “BLAH, BLAH,BLAH!”.
We can all kiss the reef goodbye because 1.5 C rise is already baked in.
“How dare you?” consider that Australia is under represented, by comparing Sunak and Meloni’s attemdance as anything but lip service.
Thank you Greta Thunberg, I still see middle aged white privileged males turn a certain, purple shade whenever I use the tone and quote.and I love it.
At least we, who can afford to, are all contributing in our own way, by doing things like putting extra solar systems and taking parts of our households totally off grid.
Who cares what faces attend, anyway? What’s important is the actual results of any agreements made. And so far, regardless of attendees at previous cOP-outs,, results have been pretty dismal!
Egypt? A PR exercise, send anyone. Lever the prim-minster here to ruin the country.