We all have that one embarrassing uncle. You know, the one that hosts a family function and then proceeds to argue with everyone.
The one that brings up all the embarrassing stories, such as the moment when you peed your pants when you were ten. Well, at this year’s G20 summit hosted in Brisbane, Tony Abbott was Australia’s embarrassing uncle. Here’s a list of Abbott’s top four ‘face-palm’ moments.
He said that?
Abbott did his best to keep climate change off the G20 agenda on the basis that the meeting was just ‘about business‘. Luckily the other leaders insisted the final communiqué call for a legally binding climate change agreement to be reached by 2015.
As the US and China celebrated their landmark deal to reduce their emissions by at least 25% by 2025, Tony Abbott opened the G20 by bragging about his ‘repeal of the carbon tax’. Sources told the Daily Telegraph that Abbott said behind closed doors he would ‘stand up‘ for coal.
He described the international Green Climate Fund that helps developing countries fight climate change as ‘socialism masquerading as environmentalism‘ and refused to cough up the cash. The US and Japan committed $4.5bn and even Canada said they would contribute.
Abbott wrapped up the G20 by stating that coal can help solve energy poverty ‘for decades to come‘ which is totally untrue if we actually want to have a future, but I guess as the mining industry has helped sponsored the G20 magazine – you need to give the sponsors their money’s worth!
We reckon the last word of this family feud should go to the wise uncle, Barak Obama, who told students at the University of Queensland: ‘You have to keep raising your voices, because you deserve to live your lives in a world that is cleaner and that is healthier and that is sustainable. But that’s not going to happen unless you are heard’.
