Albanese sidesteps a meeting with Gavin Newsom in New York
The Prime Minister and the California Governor lead similar governments leaning in hard on climate change, emissions reduction, electric vehicles, renewables and net zero.
Anthony Albanese was quick to rule out a New York meeting with Donald Trump’s political arch rival, Gavin Newsom, on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) after his US envoy Kevin Rudd hugged the California governor the previous day.
Mr Newsom – the current frontrunner for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination – was at the New York Times Climate Summit, where he and the Prime Minister were among headline speakers.
The California governor attacked Donald Trump’s UN speech as an “embarrassment and abomination”, after the US President slammed climate change and renewables as a “joke, hoax, con job and scam”.
The leading Democrat, who has launched a talk-show blitz this week amid rising speculation he will nominate for the presidency ahead of the 2028 election, on Thursday (AEST) accused Mr Trump of being a “fraud”.
Mr Newsom had just the day before met with Dr Rudd and Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen in New York, as Mr Albanese seeks to unlock global capital flows to turbocharge Labor’s clean energy and net-zero transition.
Dr Rudd and Mr Newsom were seen physically embracing in a photo shared on the Democrat governor’s social media channels.
Asked whether he would meet with Mr Newsom, Mr Albanese said he wouldn’t because he had “a pretty full card”, adding that he had previously met him in San Francisco.
In a politically charged Q&A session at The New York Times’ Climate Forward event, shortly before Mr Albanese appeared on the same stage, Mr Newsom also attacked private sector chiefs for selling out and being “scared to death” of Mr Trump.
“It’s appalling, the complicity. The most successful, wealthiest people scared to death of this guy,” Mr Newsom said.
He and Mr Albanese lead similar governments leaning in hard on climate change, emissions reduction, electric vehicles, renewables and net zero.
Mr Trump’s Energy Secretary, Chris Wright – an oil and gas industry veteran hand-picked to roll back Joe Biden’s clean energy subsidies – received a frosty reception from The New York Times audience, who were told by the moderator to allow for a “respectful conversation” despite the high emotions.
Mr Wright said hundreds of wind and solar farm projects had been cancelled across the US due to a “fever pitch” of opposition in rural America.
He said people who lived near wind farms didn’t like them and those who lived in the cities did, while those who lived near oilfields liked them but those far away didn’t.
He told the summit that other countries should follow the US out of the Paris Agreement because “this has become a club of people that have lost sight of the interests of their own people”.
He also pushed back against claims China was moving away from fossil fuels and accused the communist nation of still using up to 87 per cent of hydrocarbons.
The Trump administration, which rejects an “all of the above” energy strategy, has begun blocking approvals for wind and solar projects on federal lands and stalled construction of offshore wind projects.
Mr Trump’s unravelling of Mr Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act clean-energy incentives has effectively blocked sweeteners for electric vehicles, solar and wind.
Mr Wright said the Trump administration was focused on making US energy less expensive and more reliable.
Mr Newsom said Mr Trump’s abandonment of wind and solar energy would directly benefit China, quipping that Chinese President Xi Jinping would “give Trump a big bear hug”.
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