The prime minister has defended the number of leaders attending a high-profile climate meeting in the Pacific Islands, as a United Nations report warns the world will breach the 1.5C global warming benchmark within the next five years.
The federal government had initially wanted world leaders to attend pre-COP next month, ahead of the main climate talks in Türkiye in November.
Fiji and Tuvalu are hosting the lead-up event as part of a compromise, after Australia's failed bid to host COP31, the world's largest annual climate summit.
There had been reports Australia was struggling to convince leaders outside the Pacific to attend a special meeting in Tuvalu, before Fiji's foreign minister, Sakiasi Ditoka, gave the first public account of those going.
He said Antigua and Barbuda, Cabo Verde, Thailand, Maldives and Timor-Leste had so far agreed to send leaders to the event, and Germany, Mexico and South Korea will send ministers.
When questioned about attendance at the pre-COP while speaking to media at the Pacific Islands Forum in Palau, Anthony Albanese said the government had always anticipated that a pre-COP event would not attract the same level of patronage as COP itself.
"The fact that the pre-COP is being held in Fiji with a side trip to Tuvalu as well is something that is really welcomed because what it will do is provide a focus on what is happening in the Pacific."
The prime minister also voiced his displeasure with the line of questioning.
"You are being so disrespectful to the Pacific leaders who are here," he said.
"We need to actually have some respect for the process and respect for our Pacific leaders, and Australia has an absolute interest in engaging with the Pacific."
The government pitched pre-COP as an opportunity to show leaders the perils that climate change poses to low-lying island nations in the Pacific, and to drive greater global action on climate change.
However, the nations sending leaders are hardly major polluters, nor do they need reminding of the risks climate change poses to vulnerable countries.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen said pre-COP was a "key opportunity" for the Pacific.
"The Pacific said to us, 'We thought it would be good to invite some leaders.' We've done that," he said.
"There's a very small component in Tuvalu, which is a small country, with limited capacity to host people.
"But that will be important in terms of not only prime ministers, heads of multilateral development banks, cabinet ministers who often don't attend pre-COP either but are coming to this one."
'Every fraction of a degree counts'
The growing climate risks confronting Pacific nations have been underscored by a landmark UN report, which has warned the world will likely pass 1.5C global warming in 2030.
It found that a temperature rise peak of 1.8C above pre-industrial levels was now the best-case scenario and highlights what can be done to return to 1.5C after the overshoot.
Countries have been trying to keep global temperatures to well below 2C as part of the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change.
That includes an agreement to "pursue efforts" to limit warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial times.
That target was chosen because the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that crossing that threshold risks unleashing far more severe climate change impacts.
Climate Change Authority chair Matt Kean said urgent climate action remained necessary, despite the likelihood that the 1.5C target would be exceeded.
"Every fraction of a degree that we can limit global warming will reduce the danger and reduce the cost," he said.
"There is a huge reason for Australia and indeed the rest of the world to limit global warming; the economic consequences will be dire if we don't, and the danger to lives and livelihoods will be severe if we don't.
"So the message is very clear: we need to speed up the pace at which we're reducing our emissions."
Malte Meinshausen, professor of Climate Science at the University of Melbourne, said the energy transition means some of the worst scenarios that were possible a few years ago are no longer likely.
But he added that failure to reduce global emissions quickly meant the ideal scenario of limiting warming to just above 1.5C was no longer available.
"Compared with our options five years ago, the new paths are more costly, come with more floods, fires and droughts and the need to draw, at some point, carbon emissions out of the atmosphere that we are currently emitting," Professor Meinshausen said.
Calls for Australia to do more
Speaking at the Pacific Islands Forum, Vanuatu's Climate Change Adaptation and Energy Minister, Ralph Regenvanu, said Australia was not doing enough to curb carbon emissions.
"The very least a country like Australia should be doing is stopping future expansion, and it's not doing that. You need to stop expansion, and you need to start transitioning away."
The comments come a day after Federal Resources Minister Madeleine King helped open a project that will feed gas fracked from the Beetaloo Basin into the Northern Territory's power grid.
Mr Albanese defended Australia's approach to the energy transition, saying the country was "highly regarded" when it comes to climate change.
"The Pacific leaders have respect for the position that we've taken, and they also understand […] because they're dealing with it as well, that the transition can't happen overnight.
"It requires strategies and policies to be put in place, and one of the things that renewables require is firming capacity, and gas has a role to play in firming capacity."
