While John Howard has focused on his legacy, world leaders have focused on the pressing challenge of dangerous climate change.

Melbourne has joined twenty one cities from around the world in taking action to avoid dangerous climate change. The Bill Clinton Foundation has brought some of the world’s leading cities together to pool their purchasing power, lower the price of energy-saving products and adopt energy efficiency programs.

Foundation cities in the partnership include London, New York, Los Angeles, Seoul, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Caracas, Chicago, Delhi, Dhaka, Istanbul, Johannesburg, Madrid, Mexico City, Melbourne, Paris, Philadelphia, Rome, Sao Paulo, Toronto and Warsaw.

This initiative follows hot on the heels of the agreement between Tony Blair and Arnold Schwarzenegger to establish a trans-Atlantic greenhouse emissions trading scheme, and their climate change roundtable yesterday with some of the world’s leading business figures. Britain and California have committed to “urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote low carbon technologies”.

Everyone’s talking and acting on climate change except for John Howard, who’s still thinking about Robert Menzies’ record.

John Howard should start listening to the world’s political and business leaders. This is what they’ve said in the last two days:

· Arnold Schwarzenegger: “You can protect the environment and you can make sure the economy grows without any problems.”

· Tony Blair: “There couldn't be anything more important for our children and for the generations to come, and it is a very heavy responsibility we have at this time, knowing what we now know with the science as certain as it is, we have to act”.

· Bill Clinton: “It doesn’t make sense for us to sit back and wait for others to act. The fate of the planet that our children and grandchildren will inherit is in our hands, and it is our responsibility to do something about this crisis.”

· Lord Browne, Chief Executive Officer of BP: “Addressing climate change will take bold leadership. It’s a global problem and will require a global solution.”

Instead of taking action, John Howard has blocked every serious initiative to cut Australia’s spiralling greenhouse pollution, saying no to emissions trading, the Kyoto Protocol, increasing the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target and Labor’s target of a 60% cut in greenhouse pollution by 2050.