Greens urge Bowen on coal and gas

The Greens are urging Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen to take a concrete position on new coal and gas projects with him to the COP27 summit in Egypt to reassure Australia's Pacific neighbours.

Party leader Adam Bandt says the United Nations, which is hosting the international forum, has called out nations seeking to 'greenwash' their climate credentials by pledging net zero but opening new coal and gas developments and relying on questionable offsets to meet targets.

Meanwhile, Pacific Island leaders have called for a coal and gas non-proliferation agreement.

The proposal is similar to one previously used to wind down the threat of nuclear war and demands richer polluting nations compensate those most affected by global heating.

"Labor must tell the (COP27) summit what it will do about new coal and gas," Mr Bandt is expected to tell his audience during a speech at Melbourne's LaTrobe University on Monday.

"The two warnings from the summit are that low pledges have us on a highway to hell and the net zero pledges are just 'greenwashing' if they use dodgy offsets to try to hide new coal and gas projects.

"The secretary-general of the UN isn't mincing words when he calls greenwashing via offsets rank deception."

Mr Bandt will say Australia, as a wealthy nation, has a responsibility to clean up the mess created by the coal and gas it has extracted and should commit to supporting the COP27 loss and damage fund with $1.5 billion.

Meanwhile, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has asserted Australia working with China co-operatively on climate change would be in everybody's interest.

Such issues are too big for any one country to tackle individually, she said on Sunday.

While uncertainty surrounds whether Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit later this week, Ms Plibersek said talks with China on the matter would be significant.

"Wherever we can, it is in our interests for China to be part of the international community and on issues like the Pacific and climate change, if we can work co-operatively, of course that's in everybody's interests," she told Sky News.

Ms Plibersek said Australia backed discussions on compensation.

"Of course Australia supports having a discussion about how we help countries that have been really badly impacted by climate change cope with those impacts," she said.

"Nobody's talking about committing money at this meeting, that might be a discussion for future meetings."