Extract from The Guardian
More than 100 businesses and organisations have supported the independent MP’s climate change bill in ads in major newspapers
Last modified on Sat 7 Nov 2020 06.03 AEDT
The independent MP Zali Steggall has called on Australia’s chief scientist, Dr Alan Finkel, to issue a clear opinion on whether the country should commit to cutting greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.
Steggall is due to present to parliament on Monday long-promised climate change legislation that would include a target of net zero by 2050 that could be ratcheted up in line with changing scientific evidence.
The private member’s bill, which was announced in February but delayed due to Covid-19, is supported by Steggall’s fellow crossbenchers Rebekah Sharkie, Helen Haines, Andrew Wilkie and the Greens, and has been backed by climate scientists, economists and some business leaders, including the Business Council of Australia’s Jennifer Westacott, who described it as “sensible”.
It is opposed by the government, which controls whether it will be debated in parliament and has rejected a 2050 net zero target.
More than 100 businesses and organisations, including the Australian Medical Association, the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia, multinational company Unilever and software developer Atlassian, supported the bill in advertisements in major newspapers on Saturday that called for bipartisan support to address Covid-19 and climate change simultaneously.
Omar Khorshid, the Australian Medical Association president, said the bill was balanced and should be easy for both the government and opposition to support. “Australian doctors are needing our parliament to prevent further climate impacts that exacerbate poor health outcomes,” he said.
The bill would require the government to set a rolling emissions budget and introduce risk assessment and adaptation plans, establish an independent climate change commission and incorporate the government’s technology investment roadmap. It is modelled on existing legislation in Britain, New Zealand and Ireland.
The emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, suggested Steggall’s bill was “simply a plan for more process and more bureaucracy”. “Unlike the government’s technology investment roadmap, it doesn’t rule out imposing new taxes or increasing costs on households and businesses to meet its targets,” a spokesman said.
The opposition’s climate change spokesman, Mark Butler, welcomed “any constructive effort to progress climate action”. “Labor supports any opportunity to debate the need for action on climate change in the parliament,” he said. “For Zali Steggall’s bill to be considered, Scott Morrison would need to allow a full debate in the parliament.”
Steggall has also written to Finkel asking him to clarify his views on how the climate crisis was likely to affect Australia and the country’s plans to cut emissions.
She said he should clarify whether he accepted the findings of a 2018 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and what is his advice on what Australia should be doing in response, including the speed at which it needed to cut its emissions.
“It is important to know whether he is basing his advice to the government on the accepted international science,” Steggall said. “We are on a current trajectory of 3C of warming by the turn of the century and unless we start acting, those emissions will continue to rise.”
Finkel told Guardian Australia his position on the science of climate change was “very clear”, and that he had given speeches and written opinion pieces stressing that it was real, due to human activity, happening “with a rapidity that is deeply affecting our way of life” and global emissions must be reduced as a matter of urgency.
He said he provided scientific advice to the government on the issue, including as the chair of the panel advising it on its low-emissions technology plans, which he said positioned Australia “to be a leader in the global shift to a decarbonised future”. But he did not say whether the country should reduce its emissions to net zero by 2050.
The chief scientist said he was confident his advice had been taken into account. “But I recognise that scientific evidence and advice is just one element – a very important element – that is considered in policy decisions,” Finkel said.
Steggall’s letter to Finkel referred to his evidence to Senate estimates in October, when he said an earlier net zero target was preferable to a later one, but noted Australia’s commitment under the Paris agreement was to reach that emissions goal in the second half of the century.
She said the Paris agreement also included goals of holding the increase in global average temperatures about pre-industrial levels to well below 2C and to “pursuing efforts” to limit it to 1.5C to reduce climate change risks and impacts.
She cited the 2018 report by the IPCC, commissioned by the signatories to the Paris agreement, that found limiting heating to 1.5C would require a “rapid and far-reaching transition”, including global emissions falling about 45% below 2010 levels by 2030 and reaching net zero by about 2050.
The Morrison government has set a 2030 emissions reduction target of between 26% and 28% below 2005 levels, having rejected a science-based recommendation by the Climate Change Authority of a 45%-60% cut over that timeframe.
It is facing pressure from several major trading partners to do more to combat the issue. Britain and France led a group of countries that wrote to Morrison and other national leaders last month calling on them to increase their commitments before an online leader’s climate summit on 12 December.
China, Japan and South Korea, the major markets for Australian coal and gas exports, all say they plan to reach net zero emissions by 2050 or shortly after. The US is expected to make the same commitment if Joe Biden wins the presidential election.
In the most recent greenhouse accounts, Australia’s emissions were about 14% below 2005 levels. The change mostly occurred under the Labor governments between 2007 and 2013, when they fell nearly 15%. They had dropped 2.2% since the Coalition was elected in 2013.
Government emissions projections released last December suggested Australia would miss its 2030 target unless it used contentious carryover credits from the previous climate deal, the Kyoto protocol.
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