Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard joined forces with former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to urge global action on climate change, saying politics must be put aside.
The unlikely pair met in Perth on Thursday and jointly penned an opinion piece that ran in News Limited newspapers.
Australia is a key greenhouse gas emitter with a heavy reliance on coal mining and exports and most of its electricity comes from coal-fired power stations.
But last November it pledged to sign up for a second round of the Kyoto Protocol environmental protection treaty to reduce emissions, while one of Gillard’s key policies since taking office has been the introduction of a carbon pollution tax.
Hollywood star Schwarzenegger signed a historic bill in 2006 as governor that made California the first US state to impose limits on global warming gases.
They added that to drive the economic change necessary to lower emissions to less damaging levels “we need everyone to recognise that pollution has a cost”.
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