Talking to Guardian Australia, the former PM reflects on Copenhagen accord and an ‘180-degree’ shift in China’s position on globally binding agreement

The Copenhagen climate summit in 2009 contributed to the demise of Kevin Rudd’s first prime ministership. But Rudd, back for the Paris summit of 2015, insists Copenhagen wasn’t quite the failure it was made out to be.



He says his views on global warming haven’t changed and that unlike other, unnamed, colleagues from his time in office, his attendance in Paris proves that his interest in the issue of global warming has not wavered.

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“I am a believer in climate change action. Let me say it again in print, I believe it is the greatest moral challenge of our age,” he says in an interview with Guardian Australia.

“My position hasn’t changed on that, nor will it change. The reasons I am here, supporting this process today when very few of my colleagues of five or six years ago are here, is because I attach great importance to this. That is why I continue to work on climate change projects with the world’s largest polluters in China and India,” says Rudd, now the president of the New York-based Asia Society Policy Institute.

Rudd invested enormous effort in the diplomatic efforts before and during the Copenhagen talks, and afterwards colleagues said he fell into a “slump”, missing the window of opportunity to call a double-dissolution election on his defeated emissions trading scheme at a time when the polls said he would have easily beaten the new opposition leader, Tony Abbott.

Now Rudd insists the Copenhagen talks provided an important stepping stone to the current negotiations and will be viewed more positively by history than they are now, even though they were clearly a political failure.

“If you read this draft Paris accord, its essential architecture is what was contained in the Copenhagen accord,” he says.

Copenhagen, he says, “stands up well as a major policy building block to where we are now. But in terms of the political stage management of Copenhagen, everyone knows that was a spectacular disaster.”

Like most observers in Paris he identifies India’s insistence that it needs to continue to use coal-fired power, and that its development needs cannot be compromised, as the major potential stumbling block in the Paris talks, which are scheduled to last two weeks.

“In Copenhagen, both China and India were not supportive of a globally binding arrangement and sought to reduce it to a de minimis outcome.

“The remarkable thing is there has been a 180-degree shift in the Chinese position since Copenhagen. The big question is now India’s position. The Indian industrial development curve is 30 years behind China and the most carbon-intensive part of India’s industrial development has yet to begin.

“So if we are serious about having India on board and India acting in a manner different to the China carbon explosion of the last 30 years, then this conference has to make clear how it will help India with its own rapid transformation of its energy mix.”

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On Malcolm Turnbull, Rudd says his discussions in diplomatic circles indicate “the jury is out” about the new Coalition leader.

“People are looking and hoping, but suspending judgment for a while. There is a palpable sense of relief that Abbott is no longer directing climate change policy, not just because of his position that climate change is absolute crap but also his general hostility to multilateralism. But there is also a genuine suspending of judgment about Turnbull,” he says, arguing that in the end there will be factual evidence available as to whether the Coalition’s carbon policies are working.

He says he attended Turnbull’s address to the UN summit on Monday as “the respectful thing to do”, sitting with the prime minister of Papua New Guinea.

“I appropriately applauded when Malcolm announced Australia would ratify the second Kyoto commitment period. Ratifying Kyoto is useful as a baseline to Australia’s commitment to multilateral action.”