Former prime minister Kevin Rudd is now working on climate policy for the Asia Institute. Picture: AAP Image/Dean Lewins.

The ex-Labor leader, now serving as President of the New York-based Asia Society, also took a swipe at the Greens over his ill-fated emissions trading scheme, saying it meant Australia was not where it should be on the issue.

“Had the Greens bothered to pass our emissions trading scheme back in 2009 rather than allowing the perfect to get in the road of the good then we would be five years down the track in dealing with what most of these other countries are dealing with,” he told news.com.au on the sidelines of the Paris conference.

“We put it to the Senate twice, it was voted down twice by the Greens. We could have avoided all that. But, that’s history. At present the international community is giving Malcolm Turnbull the benefit of the doubt to see what he can now do.”

Mr Rudd led the Australian delegation to the last major international summit on the issue in Copenhagen in 2009. However that meeting was widely seen as a disaster, largely due to the failure of India and China — who along with the US account for the lion’s share of global emissions — to engage on the issue.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull delivers his leaders address in Paris. Picture: AFP/Jacques DemarthonSource:AFP

Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Copenhagen six years ago.Source:AFP

Five years on, Mr Rudd said China had undertaken a “180 degree shift” on climate policy and the science behind global warming was no longer seen as contentious.

“In 2009 we arrived at the conference, then, it was kind of a three or four out of 10 expectation that we might actually achieve a result given the degrees of difficulty particularly from China and India at the time,” he said.

“This time is more like a six or seven out of 10 probability that we’ll get an agreement and the building blocks for that agreement were largely laid down in Copenhagen. Key ones like keeping temperature increases below two degrees centigrade.”

A day earlier, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull pledged Australia’s commitment to its target of cutting emissions by 26-28 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030 and committed to $1 billion in funding for vulnerable nations to mitigate the effects of global warming — to be drawn from the existing aid budget.

He also ratified the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, but was also criticised for failing to pledge and end to fossil fuel subsidies.

So given the disastrous history of Australia’s attempts to put a price on carbon during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd-Abbott-Turnbull era, was it frustrating for the former PM sitting on the bench?

“I’ve always been entirely philosophical about politics. And that is, that you do what you can do for the period that you can do it in. And if you succeed, terrific,” he said.

“We might have wanted to have come on a 100 mile journey. We might have wanted to have reached 60 miles by this stage and we might have only reached 40 or 50 but that’s better than zero.”

In a statement, the Greens stood by their decision to block the CPRS during Mr Rudd’s prime ministership.

“It was a bad policy for the same reason Direct Action is a bad policy: it locked in failure, paid polluters to keep polluting, hiding inaction with smoke and mirrors,” a Greens spokesman said.

“Instead, the Greens negotiated an ETS that cut emissions, made polluters pay, and was considered template legislation for the rest of the world. The Liberals, Nationals and Palmer Party should never have disrupted its work.”

The Greens’ emissions target involves a 60-80 per cent cut on 2000 levels by 2030, and net-zero pollution by 2040.