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:
“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)