Criticism
Environmental and climate organisations such as Greenpeace, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Climate Action Network criticised the agreement for not setting binding targets on greenhouse gas emissions for developed countries, and that the statement was little more than a political stunt.
Greenpeace pointed out that Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told an APEC lecture in Melbourne in April 2007 that aspirational targets are a "political stunt" and "not a real target at all". One Greenpeace spokesperson said the declaration should be named the "Sydney Distraction" on climate change.
The Australian Conservation Foundation called the declaration "very weak" and said the "declaration does not advance global discussions on climate change."
Read more about this topic: Sydney Declaration
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.”
—Richard Holt Hutton (1826–1897)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)