Australia Receives Backlash for Modest Goals at UN Summit

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This week, as the United Nations (UN) held its annual General Assembly regarding global warming and the changing climate, all eyes and ears turned towards New York City, where celebrities, protestors and world leaders all came together for the unified goal of changing the Earth's future.

As protestors filled Wall Street demanding immediate change and a call to action, another "Wolf of Wall Street", the UN's newest Messenger of Peace, Leonardo DiCaprio spoke out against current rates of carbon emissions and asked the public to be a part of the change.

"The Chief of the US Navy's Pacific Command, Admiral Samuel Locklear, recently said that climate change is our single greatest security threat" DiCaprio said. "My friends, this body (the UN) now faces that difficult task. You can make history, or be vilified by it."

Though while all nations in attendance were open to the call for change, some found themselves vilified far before their history's could be written in the record books.

As recent climate changes have been a great cause for concern on a global scale, some nations are hoping for a far swifter response than others. And this divergence in practicality versus over-ambition caused quite a stir when the representative from Australia had to defend herself from a berate of negative comments from other world leaders at last week's UN summit.

Foreign Affairs Minister for Australia Julie Bishop made it clear that the nation, who is only responsible for a total of 1.5 percent of the entire world's greenhouse gas emissions, would be taking a practical approach towards incremental change. At a meeting last weekend, Bishop told members of the Major Economies Forum that Australia intended to stick with its ambitious, yet low target of 5 percent overall reductions of their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. However, not all other world leaders felt that Australia was making appropriate efforts against the worsening climate changes.

"I'm disappointed, but not surprised with Australia" Gambia's Climate Change Minister, who represents the 54 least developed nations at the UN meetings, Pa Ousman Jarju says. "What the Foreign Minister said was as good as not coming. It's nothing."

Though the issue is far more complex than the UN could possibly solve with a single summit, many nations in attendance did not fully understand the small goals of the large island nation. As Australia contributes a small amount of emissions towards the global scale of a growing problem, the nation understands that incremental changes towards less dependence on fossil fuels will not ultimately come from a single nation alone. Rather Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who was not in attendance for this week's meetings of the UN, says that the climate change issue will only be addressed by global efforts brought forth by the participation and incremental changes of every nations' practices.

"We can only succeed in combating climate change if we are joined in this effort by every nation: developed and developing alike. Nobody gets a pass" Abbott says. "Nobody can stand on the sidelines on this issue."

"We have to set aside the old divides. We have to raise our collective ambition, each of us doing what we can to confront this global challenge."