r/australia

Preparations for Cop31 will kick up a gear this week with a small group of national leaders, including the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, expected to join representatives of more than 50 countries for a preparatory meeting in Fiji and Tuvalu.

The meeting is being held just days after a New South Wales regulator approved the largest coalmine expansion in the Australian state’s history. Joint owners Yancoal and Glencore estimate the 19-year life extension for the Hunter Valley Operations thermal coalmine could lead to 809m tonnes of heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions if it wins federal approval.

Vanuatu’s climate change minister, Ralph Regenvanu, said it would be “deeply disappointing” for Pacific countries if Australia extended the life of a major coalmine as it led the Cop31 negotiations. “This decision sends the wrong signal at a critical time,” he said,

Bill Hare, the chief executive of the Climate Analytics, a science and policy institute, said it would be “interesting to see” if Turkey and Australia could set aside their “addiction to fossil fuels”. He said the Australia Labor government had approved 37 fossil fuel developments for export since its election in 2022, while Turkey under president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan seemed “fixated on prioritising digging up and burning coal … and establishing itself as a regional fossil gas hub”.

Every year regardless of what I'm doing I make certain I can watch the race, from start to finish, on TV.

This year I will be in ICU or a Cardiac Unit while the race is on and I'm pissed off about it.

Best of luck to all the drivers on the day. I wish I was drinking beer and screaming with excitement at the TV.

:(

Anyone else Collecting or playing the card game Currently?

interested to hear! mid 30s back into Collecting the Card game.