By North America correspondent Barbara Miller in Washington DC
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has refused to bow to pressure from the US to use a global climate summit convened by President Joe Biden to announce an increased target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
"We are well on the way to meet our Paris commitments," Mr Morrison told the summit, which laid bare the gulf between Australia and many of its key allies in how best to tackle the climate crisis.
"We'll
update our long-term emissions reduction strategy for Glasgow", he
said, referring to the COP26 climate action conference to be held in
Scotland in November.
That leaves Australia aiming for a reduction of between 26 to 28 per cent on 2005 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, an ambition about half the size of the revised US goal.
Mr Biden announced the US would aim to increase its Paris target to a reduction in emissions of between 50 to 52 per cent by 2030 on 2005 levels.
He told the 40 countries invited to the virtual gathering that there was a "moral imperative" to take action.
"The United States isn't waiting."
Ahead of the meeting, US officials had said they expected all countries, including Australia, to come to the table with increased ambitions on reducing emissions if there was to be a chance of limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius and ideally closer to 1.5 degrees on pre-industrial levels.
"It's insufficient to follow the existing trajectory and hope that they [Australia] will be on a course to deep decarbonization and getting to net zero emissions by mid-century," a senior official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
The official said Australia now "recognises that there's going to have to be a shift".
If the running order at the summit was anything to go by no-one was truly expecting that shift to be announced anytime soon.
Morrison's speech plagued by technical difficulties
Mr Morrison was called on as 21st of 27 speakers, well behind China, Russia, Japan, the UK, South Korea and Canada.
Despite the late hour in Canberra, Bangladesh, Brazil and Bhutan were all afforded the opportunity to speak ahead of Australia.
State Department spokesman Ned Price later told the ABC the he "wouldn't read more into the order or the sequence than is necessary".
"I do not think order was indicative of anything other than temporal sequencing," he said.
By the time Mr Morrison's turn came, Mr Biden had already excused himself from the session.
When Mr Morrison did begin speaking some of his words were lost due to technical difficulties that plagued a number of segments in the summit.
"Mr Prime Minister I'm not sure we are hearing you," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken ventured, before another long pause as Mr Morrison was seen but not heard.
Mr Morrison outlined his stated belief that technology trumps climate action targets.
He did not commit Australia to achieving net zero emissions by 2050, as more than 100 nations have now done, including the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and Korea.
China has said it hopes to reach net zero emissions by 2060, an aspiration President Xi Jinping repeated at the summit, telling world leaders that "to protect the environment is to protect productivity, and to improve the environment is to boost productivity".
"The truth is as simple as that", Mr Xi stated, saying China was looking forward to working with the US and the international community, "to jointly advance global environmental governance".
Beeps, echoes and leaders on mute
Technical glitches arose from the beginning of the summit. US Vice-President Kamala Harris's voice echoed as she kicked off the two-day summit by introducing Mr Biden.
That set a tone for the event, which also featured random beeps, still more echoes and the accidental disclosure that French President Emmanuel Macron's speech seemed to be taped.
Mr Macron was just minutes into a speech about the urgency of climate action when Mr Blinken cut in, saying: "Thank you very much Mr President, I now turn the floor to the President of the Russian Federation, his Excellency Vladimir Putin."
Mr Macron's voice continued, however, while the camera switched to the Washington meeting room where Mr Biden, climate envoy John Kerry and Mr Blinken were looking at Mr Putin on a big screen.
The sound then cut as a puzzled-looking Mr Putin could be seen consulting with an aide as he waited for his microphone to be opened.
For more than a minute, the Russian leader was silent on screen, staring forward and not talking except to turn his head toward aides.
"The
floor is now to the President of the Russian Federation, Mr Vladimir
Putin. Mr President," Mr Blinken continued, inviting Mr Putin to speak.
Mr Putin kept waiting as Mr Blinken could be heard saying off-screen: "We may be getting a tape, because that was a tape of Macron."
Moments later, Mr Putin delivered his speech, after which Mr Macron's speech started again from the beginning.
"We had some technical difficulties," Mr Blinken said.
Mr Macron's office confirmed that his speech had been pre-recorded, as he would be travelling to Chad to attend the funeral of late President Idriss Deby.
During several leaders' talks, phone-dialling beeps intruded and there were several times when stray voices talked over leaders.
Australia creating 'hydrogen valley'
On net zero emissions Mr Morrison said the goal was "to get there as soon as we possibly can, through technology that enables and transforms our industries.
"Not taxes that eliminate them and the jobs and livelihoods they support and create, especially in our regions.
"For Australia, it is not a question of if or even by when for net zero, but importantly, how."
In the run-up to the summit Mr Morrison announced investments of $275 million in regional hydrogen hubs and $263.7 million for carbon capture and storage projects and hubs.
He told the meeting Australia aspired "to produce the cheapest green hydrogen in the world".
Mr Morrison said future generations would "thank us not for what we have promised, but what we deliver. And on that score, Australia can always be relied upon."
Earlier this week the Prime Minister suggested the desire for climate targets was strongest among urban elites, when he said Australia would "not achieve net zero in the cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of our inner cities."
'Nothing wrong with bunny hugging'
UK leader Boris Johnson indirectly addressed this vein of thought when he told the summit: "This is not all about some expensive, politically correct, green act of bunny hugging."
"There's nothing wrong with bunny hugging but you know what I'm driving at friends and colleagues. This is about growth and jobs," Mr Johnson said, after this week announcing his country would aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 78 per cent on 1990 levels by 2035.
"'Cake have eat' is my message to you", Mr Johnson said.
Jobs, jobs, jobs was also the mantra Mr Biden was attempting to drive home as he addressed the summit, outlining a vision where workers were gainfully employed building a cleaner energy grid, capping abandoned oil and gas wells and building the next generation of electric vehicles.
The summit was an attempt within his first 100 days in office for the US to re-assert itself as a leader and reliable partner in action on climate change, following a disastrous four years on that front under former US president Donald Trump, who walked away from the Paris agreement.
Samantha Gross, director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institution, said the summit had been a success for the US.
"I think the most important thing that this summit did was that it happened, it's a coming-out party in a sense for the US," she said.
"[It's] saying that we're back."
A number of countries did come to the table with increased targets, including Japan which announced that it aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 46 per cent by 2030 compared with 2013 levels, up from 26 per cent; and Canada, which was aiming for a 40 to 45 per cent reduction by 2030 on 2005 levels, up from 30 per cent.
Ms Gross said "there's time" for other countries including Australia to follow suit ahead of the much-anticipated COP26 in Glasgow.
If Australia doesn't, it may find itself slipping even further down the speaking order.
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