Australia: Climate laggard lashed. Al Gore responds to Tony …

Pic: Looking towards Blackheath from Katoomba; https://twitter.com/workmanalice

• The Age: Clear link between climate change and bushfires: UN adviser warns Tony Abbott A senior United Nations climate change official says there is ”absolutely” a link between climate change and bushfires and has warned that the Coalition government will pay a high political and financial price for its decision to scrap carbon pricing. In an interview with CNN’s Christine Amanpour on Monday, the head of the UN’s climate change negotiations, Christiana Figueres, said there was a clear link between climate change and bushfires such as those raging in New South Wales. She noted that the World Meteorological Organisation had not yet established a direct link between the NSW fires and climate change. “But what is absolutely clear is the science is telling us that there are increasing heat waves in Asia, Europe, and Australia; that these will continue; that they will continue in their intensity and in their frequency,” Ms Figueres said. The highly unusual intervention by a senior UN official in a domestic climate policy debate comes three weeks before the next major round of UN-sponsored talks in Warsaw. The negotiations are aiming to reach a global climate treaty by 2015 that would take effect by 2020. Ms Figueres described the NSW fires as an ”example of what we may be looking at unless we take actually vigorous action”.

• ABC: Desperation of Life beyond MIS

Former Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson says there’s a sense of desperation amongst Tasmanian plantation owners caught up in the Gunns and MIS collapse.

Mr Ferguson made the comment after the first public forum held to discuss the fate of Tasmania’s privately owned hardwood plantations.

The former minister is chairing the panel set up last month by the State Government to map out the future of the plantations in the wake of the failure of Gunns, Forest Enterprises Australia and other managed investment schemes.

Mr Ferguson says he’ll be talking with the federal Coalition government because both sides of politics have a responsibility to find a solution.

“Managed investment schemes at the time were seen as the appropriate way forward,” he said.

“There was an option of a pulp mill.

“How do we create an incentive to have a supply of timber and to encourage people to invest and get a return on their investment?

“Experience has shown it wasn’t potentially the best way forward. We learn from that.

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The panel held its first public forum in Hobart today and will be holding more public meetings in Launceston tomorrow.

• ABC: Al Gore weighs into debate over links between bushfires and climate change Mr Gore says powerful special interest groups are preventing governments around the world from properly tackling climate change. “The energy companies, coal companies particularly, have prevented the Congress of the US from doing anything meaningful so far from doing anything about the climate crisis,” he said. “It reminds me of politicians here who got a lot of support from the tobacco companies and who argued to the public that there was absolutely no connection between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer. “For 40 years the tobacco companies were able to persuade pliant politicians within their grip to tell the public what they wanted them to tell them, and for 40 years the tragedy continued.”

• Christine Milne: Inventory provides more evidence price on carbon pollution is working