“WE ARE not leading but we certainly aren’t lagging,” declared Tony Abbott, Australia’s prime minister, of his country’s pledge on August 11th to cut carbon emissions 26% by 2030. Measured against a 2005 baseline, Australia’s plans come ahead of the United Nations climate change conference later this year. They are meagre compared with those proposed by America and the European Union, however, and speak to recent strife over Australia’s climate policies. The country’s Liberal-National coalition, in power since 2013, has slashed renewable energy targets and repealed carbon and mining taxes. Mr Abbott, a proud climate-change sceptic, believes coal is “good for humanity”—convenient given how much of the stuff Australia has as the world’s fifth-largest producer. But the country is already suffering thanks to climate change from manmade emissions: seven of the hottest ten years there have occurred since 1988. Australians emit more carbon per person than do residents of Saudi Arabia, Canada and America. Their nation’s weak pledge to reduce them will do little to help, and perhaps much to harm, efforts to limit global warming to just 2°C.