The new Australian Cabinet will be the first in six years to not have a ministerial role for climate change issues, merging instead global warming with the wider environment portfolio. Announcing his Cabinet on Monday, incoming Prime Minister Tony Abbott appointed Greg Hunt, the Liberal-National Coalition’s spokesman on climate change issues since 2009, as the new Minister for the Environment. “The change signals that as expected, the Abbott government will not give climate change the same weight as the previous government,” said Frank Jotzo, deputy director of Australia National University’s Climate Change Institute. --Reuters Point Carbon, 16 September 2013
