Politics
Australia Excluded From Global Climate Talks as Policies Lag
- Pope Francis and Xi Jinping among leaders attending UN summit
- Countries only allowed to speak if they have a concrete pledge
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Around 70 world leaders including China’s Xi Jinping and Pope Francis will use a global climate summit this weekend to outline new pledges to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who supports fossil fuels, will be conspicuously absent.
Morrison wasn’t invited to speak at the United Nations Climate Action Summit on Saturday because he hadn’t come up with an ambitious enough pledge, according to two people familiar with the matter. The summit marks the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius -- a target which the world has yet to achieve.