Climate change: Beaten by Brazil

Last year the government announced a climate change target of a 30% reduction on 2005 emissions by 2030. It was an unambitious target, puffing up a pathetic 11% cut from 1990 emissions behind the baseline shift, and worse, would commit us to failure on our 50% by 2050 target (which is against the 1990 baseline). And as a sign of just how unambitious it is, its just been trumped by Brazil:

The Brazilian government has ratified its participation in the Paris agreement on climate change, a significant step by Latin America’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases that could spur other countries to follow suit.

[...]

Countries set their own targets for reducing emissions. The targets are not legally binding, but nations must update them every five years. Using 2005 levels as the baseline, Brazil committed to cutting emissions 37% by 2025 and an “intended reduction” of 43% by 2030.

So there you have it: we're dragging our feet so badly on climate change that even developing nations are setting targets substantially more ambitious than ours. But I guess that's what you get when you have a government stuffed with (barely) closeted deniers and working for polluters.