Disastrous, dark shadow, destroys our economy: five climate elders on Peter Dutton’s emissions stance

Peter Garrett says Peter Dutton’s rejection of Australia’s 2030 emissions reduction target is ‘a judgment disastrous in consequences and destabilising for his own party’. Photograph: Kane Hibberd

Any sense of a ceasefire in Australia’s fractious climate wars was blown away this week after the Coalition said it would not back the country’s 2030 emissions reduction target at the next election.

Peter Dutton’s declaration would mean that, if elected, a Coalition government will seek to breach a central tenet of the global Paris climate accord that countries should not “backslide” on their climate ambition.