Extract from The Guardian
Labor says the Coalition is isolated on climate change and needs to commit to net zero emissions by 2050
Australia has formally updated its United Nations climate policy without fanfare and without any improvement to its 2030 target to cut emissions, sparking criticism from Labor, the Greens and climate policy experts and campaigners.
Repeating language heard frequently in recent months, the document, submitted to the United Nations on New Year’s Eve, says Australia will “meet and beat” its declared 2030 target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels.
“This target is a floor on Australia’s ambition,” the update to Australia’s UN pledge – known as a National Determined Contribution (NDC) – states.
“Australia is aiming to overachieve on this target, and newly-released emissions projections show Australia is on track to meet and beat its 2030 target without relying on past overachievement.”
The reference to “overachievement” is another public declaration the Morrison government has now decided it won’t use the controversial carryover credits from previous UN agreements.
Australia’s target has remained the same since since 2015, when the then environment minister Greg Hunt made the formal submission to the UN’s climate convention.
The document also promises Australia will submit a long-term greenhouse gas emissions reduction strategy before the next major global climate talks, currently scheduled for November in Glasgow.
Labor’s climate spokesman, Mark Butler, said in a statement to the Guardian: “Scott Morrison’s 26% emissions reduction target is completely inadequate and in line with more than 3C of warming.”
He said Australia’s target “should be set in accordance with proper scientific and economic advice”, but he didn’t say what that target should be.
Butler added: “Scott Morrison is completely isolated on climate change and needs to commit to net zero emissions by 2050.”
Bill Hare, an international climate policy expert and chief executive at Climate Analytics, said when the Paris agreement was read as whole, it was clear that countries were expected to continually improve their pledges.
“This says Australia doesn’t take the need to increase ambition seriously. It is definitely against the spirit of the agreement.”
Hare added Australia has argued it does not yet need to show its commitments are improving, but he added: “If everyone read the Paris agreement in the same way then we’re all cooked and fried.”
Prof Frank Jotzo, the director of the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy at the Australian National University, said there was international expectation that developed countries would improve their 2030 targets.
He said the updated NDC would not be recognised internationally as an improvement “because the headline target remains the same and the use of carryover credits was never accepted in any case”.
“The basic fact is that developed countries are expected to take on stronger 2030 targets and Australia has not done so and that will no doubt provoke criticism.”
The latest submission was further evidence, Jotzo said, that Australia’s 2030 target would be easy to achieve. He said Australia could be holding back on announcing a stronger target, enabling it to respond to likely increased pressure in the coming months from a new US administration, led by the president-elect Joe Biden.
Jotzo added: “But what the country needs far more is a long-term greenhouse gas reduction strategy. That would signal to investors where the trajectory is going.”
Because Australia’s target is bounded to 2030, the country does not technically need to submit new targets until early in 2025, when a second NDC is due.
The Paris agreement says second NDCs should be a progression from the last and for each country “reflect its highest possible ambition”.
But some countries in Australia’s position did submit improved 2030 targets in December.
The EU raised its 2030 target from a cut of 40% based on 1990 levels to a 55% cut. The UK announced its previous target to cut emissions would be raised from 57% to 68% below 1990 levels.
However, analysis from Climate Action Tracker – a global initiative that monitors and assesses countries’ climate policies – found several countries had also not increased their ambition.
Climate Action Tracker suggests latest pledges of the highest emitting countries will see global heating reach about 2.6C by the end of the century, but could be as low as 2.1C.
The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, said Australia’s latest submission was “more spin from Scott Morrison” and the 2030 targets were “putting lives at risk”.
In a statement he said: “By refusing to lift his 2030 ambition, he is giving up the fight against global warming. The government says it will meet its 2030 targets, but that’s not the point, because its 2030 targets are not consistent with the Paris agreement goal of stopping the climate crisis.”
Dr Martin Rice, the head of research at the Climate Council, said: “The federal government’s new year’s climate resolution – a repackaging of the same woeful 2030 target – is only adding fuel to our warming planet.”
He said the recent bushfires and repeated bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef showed Australia was “on track for catastrophic climate change”.
Guardian Australia asked the office of the federal energy minister, Angus Taylor, why newer targets were not included in the submission. A spokesman for the minister said in a statement: “On a per capita or emissions intensity basis, Australia’s 2030 target is more ambitious than those adopted by France, Norway, Canada, Japan or South Korea.”
He added that since 2005, Australia’s emissions had fallen faster than the G20 average, the OECD average and faster than Japan, New Zealand, and the United States.
In 2023, the UN is due to carry out a global stocktake of progress towards the Paris target to keep global heating well below 2C while “pursuing efforts” to limit heating to 1.5C.
This mechanism of a five-year cycle of raising ambition – known as the ratchet – was a key part of the UN process.
The stocktake is timed to inform countries around the world of the level of ambition that’s needed in their new targets to meet the Paris goals.
The Guardian requested comment from Australia’s energy minister, Angus Taylor.
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