The Australian and Canadian prime ministers have suggested that economic growth is more important than tackling climate change, playing down the prospects of strong co-ordinated global action.

Tony Abbott and Stephen Harper indicated during a joint media conference in Ottawa that they felt no additional pressure to address climate change as a result of the US president Barack Obama's new package to reduce emissions.

Reflecting pessimism about the likelihood of ambitious co-ordinated global action, Abbott said climate change was "not the only or even the most important problem" the world faced and argued each country "should take the action that it thinks is best to reduce emissions".

The Australian Greens accused Abbott and Harper of creating a "conservative climate deniers club" while the Australian Labor party said the surest way to destroy jobs and growth in the long term was to do nothing about climate change.

Abbott, who is due to meet Obama in the US this week, characterised the US president’s announcements as similar to the Australian government's "Direct Action measures" to reduce emissions.

"We should do what we reasonably can to limit emissions and avoid climate change – man-made climate change – but we shouldn’t clobber the economy," the Australian prime minister said.

"That’s why I’ve always been against a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme because it harms our economy without necessarily helping the environment."

Harper said he did not feel any additional pressure "other than the pressure we all feel to make progress on this important issue".

The Canadian leader argued Obama's measures, aiming to cut power plant emissions by 30% by 2030 compared with 2005 levels, did not go as far in the electricity sector as the actions Canada had already taken.

"It's not that we don’t seek to deal with climate change, but we seek to deal with it in a way that will protect and enhance our ability to create jobs and growth, not destroy jobs and growth in our countries," Harper said.

"And frankly, every single country in the world, this is their position. No country is going to undertake actions in climate change, no matter what they say, no country is going to take actions that are going to deliberately destroy jobs and growth in their country.

"We are just a little more frank about that, but that is the approach that every country’s taking."

The former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd previously described climate change as "the greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our time".

Abbott struck a different tone in Ottawa: "It’s not the only or even the most important problem that the world faces, but it is a significant problem and it’s important that every country should take the action that it thinks is best to reduce emissions, because we should rest lightly on the planet."

The Australian Labor party's climate change spokesman, Mark Butler, said Australia, as the chair of the G20, should allow climate change to be on the agenda for discussion at the key meeting in Brisbane later this year.

Butler said Abbott was wrong to say the rest of the world was moving away from carbon trading schemes, because a seventh Chinese region was about to begin an emissions trading scheme.



"The surest way to destroy jobs and growth in the medium and long term is to do nothing about climate change," Butler told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Tuesday.

"We know from all of the scientific advice internationally and here in our own country, Australia, that global warming is already having a very significant impact on our climate and it's already having an impact on a range of industries, most notably agriculture, but many others as well, so there's not a clear choice here to do nothing and save all existing jobs and have uninterrupted global growth or to undertake carbon trading schemes. We have to do something."

The Australian Greens leader, Christine Milne, said Abbott "should take this opportunity to brainstorm with his Canadian counterpart about how they're going to meet new, higher expectations set by the US, EU and China".

"There is no point creating a conservative climate deniers club," Milne said. "The two conservative leaders of two resource-based economies shouldn't get together, put their fingers in their ears and pretend nothing needs to change."

Abbott said that by the time of the G20 Australia's carbon taxes and mining taxes would be gone – an indication of his confidence the new Senate would wave through his repeal plans after 1 July.



The Abbott government has committed to a 2020 target of reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 5% against 2000 levels. It is seeking to scrap the emissions trading scheme legislated by the former Labor government and replace it with a grants-based system to encourage emissions reduction.

But the Climate Change Authority, which the government wants to abolish, found that Australia would have to treble its minimum emissions reduction target to have a “credible” role in international efforts to slow global warming.

The former Labor government's climate adviser, Ross Garnaut, argued last week that the latest US move again showed that a 5% target for 2020 was “out of step with international action” while the Grattan institute’s energy policy director, Tony Wood, said the announcement put pressure on Australia to increase its efforts.