Last In The Class

With the G20 nations meeting next week, the Climate Institute have released a report ranking the nations on their greenhouse performance - and it's pretty embarrassing for Australia.

In ability to meet greenhouse reduction targets, Australia is at the back of the field, with only Saudia Arabia, Russia and Turkey behind us. For ability to do business in a low-carbon world, Australia was last of the industrialised countries.

"It is an economic challenge, not just an environmental challenge, and one which we need all of our political parties to be focussed on" said John O'Connor of the Climate Institute, who described the results as "a wake-up call for our leaders, both the Prime Minister but also to Malcolm Turnbull."

This is something which puts our jobs and living standards at risk if we don't get on with economy-wide measures to change our economy to cut carbon pollution and to increase our productivity.

Climate Institute report: download
ABC News coverage

ps. this comes on top of Friday's report by a British Group, that Australia is now the worst polluter in the world.