Country accused of tacitly supporting oil allies’ rejection of the latest science
Greenpeace activists project words “No hope without climate action” on
the roof of the venue of the COP24 conference in Katowice, Poland.
Australia stood on the sidelines of a heated debate.
Photograph: Janis Laizans/Reuters
As four of the world’s largest oil and gas producers blocked UN
climate talks from “welcoming” a key scientific report on global
warming, Australia’s silence during a key debate is being viewed as
tacit support for the four oil allies: the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait.
The end of the first week of the UN climate talks – known as COP24 – in Katowice, Poland,
has been mired by protracted debate over whether the conference should
“welcome” or “note” a key report from the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change.
The IPCC’s 1.5 degrees report, released in October, warned the world
would have to cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 45% by 2030 to limit
global warming to 1.5C and potentially avoid some of the worst effects
of climate change, including a dramatically increased risk of drought,
flood, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.
The UN climate conference commissioned the IPCC report, but when that
body went to “welcome” the report’s findings and commit to continuing
its work, four nations – the US, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Russia,
all major oil and gas producers – refused to accept the wording,
insisting instead that the convention simply “note” the findings.
Negotiators spent two and a half hours trying to hammer out a compromise without success.
The apparently minor semantic debate has significant consequences,
and the deadlock ensures the debate will spill into the second critical
week of negotiations, with key government ministers set to arrive in
Katowice.
Most of the world’s countries spoke out in fierce opposition to the oil allies’ position.
The push to adopt the wording “welcome” was led by the Maldives,
leader of the alliance of small island states, of which Australia’s
Pacific island neighbours are members.
They were backed by a broad swathe of support, including from the EU,
the bloc of 47 least developed countries, the Independent Association
of Latin America and the Caribbean, African, American and European
nations, and Pacific countries such as the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu.
Australia did not speak during the at-times heated debate, a silence
noted by many countries on the floor of the conference, Dr Bill Hare,
the managing director of Climate Analytics and a lead author on previous
IPCC reports, told Guardian Australia.
“Australia’s silence in the face of this attack yesterday
shocked many countries and is widely seen as de facto support for the
US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait’s refusal to welcome the IPCC
report,” Hare said.
Richie Merzian, climate and energy program director at the Australia
Institute, said widespread goodwill across the Katowice talks was being
undermined by “a handful of countries” trying to disconnect the science
and urgency from the implementation of the Paris agreement.
“It is disappointing but not surprising that Australia kept its head
down during the debate … by remaining silent and not putting a position
forward, Australia has tacitly supported the US, Russia and Saudi
Arabia’s rejection of the latest science on climate change.”
Merzian said Australia’s regional neighbours, including New Zealand
and Pacific islands, had voiced strong support for the IPCC’s report,
which was a key outcome of the Paris agreement.
“A number of delegates privately shared their frustration that
countries like Australia stood on the sidelines while Trump’s, Putin’s
and King Salman’s representatives laid waste to the fundamental climate
science.”
Hare said the interests of the fossil fuel industry were seeking to thwart the conference’s drive towards larger emissions cuts.
“The fossil fuel interest – coal, oil and gas – campaign against the
IPCC 1.5 report and science continues to play out in the climate talks,
but even those countries [opposing welcoming the report] are being hit
by the impacts of only one degree of warming.
“The big challenge now is for the Polish presidency to set aside its
obsession with coal, get out of the way and allow full acknowledgement
of the IPCC 1.5C report, and its implications for increasing the
ambition of all countries, in the conclusion of COP24 later this week.”
Australia’s environment minister, Melissa Price, arrived in Katowice on Sunday, with negotiations set to resume Monday morning.
“The
government is committed to the Paris agreement and our emissions
reduction targets,” she said before leaving Australia. “Australia’s
participation in the Paris agreement and in COP24 is in our national
interest, in the interests of the Indo-Pacific region, and the
international community as a whole.”
Price said a priority for Australia at COP24 was to ensure a robust
framework of rules to govern the reporting of Paris agreement targets.
“Australia’s emissions reporting is of an exceptionally high standard
and we are advocating for rules that bring other countries up to the
standard to which we adhere.”
The latest Australian government figures, released last month, show the country’s carbon emissions continue to rise, at a rate significantly higher than recent years.
Australia’s emissions, seasonally adjusted, increased 1.3% over the
past quarter. Excluding emissions from land use, land use change and
forestry (for which the calculations are controversial), they are at a
record high.
In the third part of The Future Fix, we examine the "far away" threat of
climate change. The science is unequivocal. So why are our politicians
so resistant to taking real action? And what about us?
Matthew Absalom-Wong
Even veteran scientists hardened by decades of climate scepticism
could hardly believe their ears. Environment Minister Melissa Price,
responding to a bombshell report that distilled 6000 scientific papers,
said the experts had it wrong.
Phasing out coal within three
decades to avert calamitous global warming? That was “drawing a long
bow”, Price said of the recommendation by the United Nations'
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Sure,
the experts predict food shortages, lost livelihoods and stunted
economies. Cyclones and droughts will hit with frightening regularity.
Bleaching will annihilate the Great Barrier Reef.
But Price made
“no apology” for her government’s decision to dump efforts to cut
pollution from electricity generation. Lower power bills were more
important. And after all, she said, Australia is just a tiny contributor
to global emissions.
Around the country, scientists wrung their
hands in despair. World-renowned reef biologist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg was,
to put it mildly, “disappointed”.
“The numbers don’t lie. It’s very clear we have to phase out fossil fuels by mid-century,” he said.
“We need a leadership that embraces the future and sets us on a new course.
The naturalist Sir David Attenborough reinforced the message this
week when he told the UN climate summit in Poland that “if we don’t take
action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of
the natural world is on the horizon”.
For at least two decades,
scientific evidence on climate change has been unequivocal. By burning
fossil fuels on a massive scale, humans have changed the climate system.
And after years of torpor, we have left ourselves only a short window
of time to avoid damage on a cataclysmic scale.
Australia,
already the world’s driest inhabited continent, is uniquely vulnerable.
And yet real action here, as in much of the world, is elusive.
In
fact, on current trajectories Australia, and the world, is heading in
the wrong direction. The International Energy Agency says last year’s
emissions from energy alone – coal, gas, oil, renewables and nuclear –
rose 1.4 per cent to a historic high of 32.5 gigatonnes. This is the
equivalent of adding 170 million cars to the road. The agency expects
that emissions in 2018 will be higher still. Official data shows that
Australia’s annual carbon emissions climbed for the fourth year running
in the year to June 2017 – up by 0.7 per cent to 550 million tonnes.
The
recent release of Labor’s climate change action policy for electricity,
and the looming federal election, have thrust the issue to the
political forefront once more.
So where does Australia sit on
climate action? Where are we winning, what is holding us back, and what
can we all do to help get truly serious about cutting our greenhouse gas
emissions?
Saskia Cook-Knowles of Port Kembla High School was one of thousands of students demanding action on climate change in November. Credit: AP
Opinion polls show most Australians
accept that climate change is happening, that humans have caused it and
that they want action. It certainly emerged as a hotly contested issue
in the Wentworth by-election in October, with winning candidate Kerryn
Phelps advocating stronger action. But that doesn’t mean everyone is
frantically cutting their carbon footprint and lobbying leaders for
policy change. People do not always respond to existential threats in
rational ways.
The Australian Psychological Society’s Susie Burke
says humans tend to distance themselves from daunting problems, and see
climate change as something happening to someone else, in a faraway
place.
“Many
people ... might not be feeling the impact here and now. We tend to
discount problems we think are far away in time or place, we are more
likely to respond to threats that are close to us,” Dr Burke said.
“Our
brain is relatively unchanged from a time when survival was based on
[attending to] an imminent threat. It’s not a particularly well-suited
mechanism for huge threats like climate change.”
The residents of
the world’s lowest-lying nations, such as Kiribati, may be less
sanguine. So too are many younger Australians, who will be more exposed
to the consequences – thousands of them went on strike from school in
November to protest at government inaction.
Other people may just
feel guilty about contributing to the problem, or for failing to act.
They may distract themselves, or concentrate on other demands for their
energy – family, health, money, job security and “what we are going to
eat for dinner”, she says.
Only a tiny proportion of people truly deny the scientific reality of climate change. But this vocal and sometimes rich and powerful group – including corporations with fossil-fuel interests – can muddy the public debate with misinformation.
“Whenever people perceive there might be some uncertainty about something, it tends to have a slowing effect on people’s preparedness to do something urgent,” Dr Burke says.
Psychologists say a lack of knowledge, social pressure to consume, financial constraints and a resistance to changing our world view can also play a role in preventing climate action.
Some citizens may mistrust scientists or politicians. And in other cases, people might make a relatively minor effort to help the environment, such as recycling, and decide they are off the hook for more dramatic changes in their lifestyle.
Then-treasurer Scott Morrison brought coal to Parliament in 2017 to show Coalition support for mining the fossil fuel. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Market forces and technology
are already pushing Australia’s electricity mix from coal to
renewables, which made up about 17 per cent of the electricity mix last
year and which are growing exponentially. Individuals and communities
are working at the grassroots to cut emissions. But for Australia, and
the world, to make the drastic transition outlined by the IPCC,
governments must be willing to pull policy levers.
Unfortunately
for Australia, more than a decade of so-called “climate wars” has left a
policy paralysis. Driven by short-term interests, power struggles,
politicking and blind ideology, the nation’s leaders have fought over
and dumped a raft of promising emissions-curbing measures.
The
Coalition’s National Energy Guarantee aimed to reduce emissions while
providing a reliable mix of renewables, coal and gas. While heavily
criticised for its lack of emissions ambition, it offered a solid policy
framework upon which more progressive future governments could build.
"The real political obstacle is 'culture war stuff’."
The
plan was consigned to landfill in August after climate-sceptic MPs on
the government’s backbench rallied against it, saying it would harm the
economy, kill the coal industry and fail to rein in prices.
The
MPs apparently overlooked the colossal costs of not acting on climate
change and the benefits to be gained by decarbonising the economy.
Academic
and former Climate Change Authority board member John Quiggin says the
falling cost of renewables also renders the Coalition’s economic-harm
argument irrelevant.
The real political obstacle, Quiggin says, is “culture war stuff”.
“It’s
become part of people’s political identity ... So in that context there
is very little point in presenting [denialists] with charts and graphs
and scientific reports,” he says.
“[They]
don’t want to do anything, they don’t like environmentalists and are
therefore choosing to either deny the climate science or put forward
some other spurious reason for doing nothing.”
The powerful
influence of fossil fuel companies has also been blamed for climate
inaction in politics. The industry makes generous donations to political
parties, and a revolving door between major political parties and coal
and gas companies – Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s chief of staff John
Kunkel is a former Minerals Council of Australia executive – means coal
lobbyists know how the system works and have the ear of many a
politician.
The Greens say political parties are too reliant on fossil fuel
money, and the donations must be banned if Australia is to shift to a
clean economy. At the very least, the Greens argue, donations should be
made public before elections, not afterwards.
Quiggin says
Australia’s best hope for climate progress is a Labor government elected
for at least two terms, giving it a chance to implement its policy of a
45 per cent emissions cut across the economy. (Labor, which is
currently leading in the polls, said in November that it would seek to
revive the National Energy Guarantee but with a much higher emissions
reduction goal of 45 per cent by 2030, based on 2005 levels.)
In the meantime, the Coalition might realise that climate inaction is “a losing issue” with voters, Quiggin says.
Australians will choose how to tackle climate change targets at the next
federal election, but are our politicians going far enough to reach
net-zero carbon emissions by 2050?
If politics is holding back real progress on climate
change, then the media must take some responsibility. In Australia,
it’s the political debate around climate policy that tends to dominate
mainstream news coverage, notes the University of Sydney’s Benedetta
Brevini. She says that compared with Europe, some Australian news
outlets also give far more oxygen to the climate-sceptic agenda.
Mainstream
coverage of climate change is also usually episodic and event-driven,
focusing on natural disasters or the release of major climate reports
rather than delivering “a long-term discussion [in which] you can keep
informing the public slowly but constantly”.
“That is not great
for explaining to the public what [climate change] actually means, the
impact on the environment and giving voice to scientists,” she says.
She thinks the media should tell positive stories of people, communities and governments making a difference.
“The
idea is to give people hope that [the problem] can be controlled ...
that there is still room for adaptation and mitigation.”
A car-charging station at Tesla's wind and solar battery plant outside of Jamestown, South Australia. Credit: AAP
As the transition from coal and gas to renewable
energy gathers pace, storing electricity and connecting it to the grid
so it can be delivered on demand is the next challenge.
Australia is on the cusp of an energy storage boom,
says the Climate Council, as states invest in grid-scale battery
storage, including Tesla’s huge lithium-ion battery in South Australia.
The federal government’s Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro expansion – effectively,
a giant battery – also promises to firm up the intermittent power
generated by wind and solar.
Other
technologies show promise but need work. The Australian Renewable
Energy Agency is exploring tidal energy. The national science agency
CSIRO says wave (as in, ocean) energy could contribute up to 11 per cent
of Australia’s energy – enough to power Melbourne. Geoscience Australia
says geothermal energy, leveraging the heat that occurs naturally in
the Earth, has “significant potential”.
The federal government’s
top scientist, Alan Finkel, says Australia could slash global carbon
emissions and create a multibillion-dollar export industry by developing
hydrogen to replace fossil fuels.
The transition has its
challenges. Nuclear power, for example, has struggled to win over the
community on environmental and ethical grounds. And even when
clean-energy technology works, producing it at scale is not always
economical.
The number of
electric cars on Australian roads has increased by 160 per cent in the
past five years, but that is well behind much of the developed world.
Australia’s
reliance on road transport is another big issue: it’s one of the
reasons our per capita emissions are higher than those of most other
countries. Road, rail and domestic aviation and shipping are our
second-largest sources of greenhouse gas pollution after electricity
production, says the Climate Council. It is also the fastest-growing
source of emissions, climbing 62.9 per cent since 1990.
The number
of electric cars on Australian roads has increased by 160 per cent in
the past five years, but that is well behind much of the developed
world.
France and Britain will end the sale of new diesel and
petrol cars by 2040, and Norway and the Netherlands aim to do so by
2025. Policies such as these obviously fast-track the electric vehicle
revolution but the government has shown no signs of replicating them.
The first LNG cargo leaving Chevron's Gorgon project in WA. Credit: Bloomberg
There’s a twist too: the IPCC says that, to meet the
1.5-degree warming limit, nations not only have to slash emissions but
actively remove greenhouse pollution from the air using so-called
negative emissions technologies. For now, these methods are mostly
unproven at scale.
Carbon capture and storage involves trapping
greenhouse gases at the point of emission, such as at a coal plant, then
storing it, often underground in geological formations. Globally, fewer
than 20 large-scale projects use it.
The most advanced domestic
venture is at Chevron's Gorgon natural gas project in Western Australia –
a huge carbon polluter – which aims to capture carbon dioxide from a
gas field and inject it into undersea storage. But the injection has
been delayed due to technical issues for almost two years.
Sundrop tomato farm in Port Augusta uses solar power and desalinated water.
Meanwhile, on a patch of dry red earth at Port
Augusta, a revolution is quietly growing. From the South Australian
desert sprout juicy red tomatoes, watered and nurtured by the power of
the sun.
There is no fresh water here and the heat can be
merciless. But Sundrop Farms has shown that, with the right technology
and a dose of belief, humans can find ways to live and eat without
hurting the planet.
“What we are doing is really innovative not
only in Australian terms but international terms,” says chief executive
Steve Marafiote.
You can use solar or other solutions that can help reduce your operating expenses … but also deliver an environmental impact.
Conceived
a decade ago, the hydroponic operation runs mostly on solar thermal
power. A field of 24,000 mirrors beam energy to a 127-metre-high tower.
The resulting energy heats a huge reservoir of water that warms and
cools vast greenhouses. The energy also turns seawater pumped from the
nearby Spencer Gulf into freshwater via an onsite desalination plant.
Sundrop Farms delivers up to 17,000 tonnes of truss tomatoes each year to supermarkets – about 15 per cent of Australian supply.
Marafiote says the project, which has a tiny carbon footprint, proves the benefits of “thinking about things differently”.
“You
can use solar or other solutions that can help reduce your operating
expenses … but also deliver an environmental impact,” he says.
The
Sundrop tomato farm is just one example of enterprising people
successfully tackling climate change in Australia – and without a major
disruption to our way of life. “It resonates incredibly well with
consumers,” says Marafiote. “They are eating produce at its best.”
The 20-hectare Sundrop farm uses solar power and desalinated water from the Spencer Gulf.
Efforts to find compromise language failed and the text was dropped. IISD/ENB - Kiara Worth
Attempts to incorporate a key scientific study into global climate talks in Poland have failed.
The IPCC report on the impacts of a temperature rise of 1.5C, had a significant impact when it was launched last October.
Scientists
and many delegates in Poland were shocked as the US, Saudi Arabia,
Russia and Kuwait objected to this meeting "welcoming" the report.
It was the 2015 climate conference that had commissioned the landmark study.
The report said that the world is now completely off track, heading more towards 3C this century rather than 1.5C.
Keeping
to the preferred target would need "rapid, far-reaching and
unprecedented changes in all aspects of society". If warming was to be
kept to 1.5C this century, then emissions of carbon dioxide would have
to be reduced by 45% by 2030.
The report, launched in Incheon in South Korea, had an immediate impact winning praise from politicians all over the world.
Climate protestors marching in Katowice outside COP24. Getty Images
But negotiators here ran into serious trouble when Saudi
Arabia, the US, Russia and Kuwait objected to the conference "welcoming"
the document.
Instead they wanted to support a much more lukewarm phrase, that the conference would "take note" of the report.
Saudi
Arabia had fought until the last minute in Korea to limit the
conclusions of the document. Eventually they gave in. But it now seems
that they have brought their objections to Poland.
The dispute
dragged on as huddles of negotiators met in corners of the plenary
session here, trying to agree a compromise wording.
None was forthcoming.
With no consensus, under UN rules the passage of text had to be dropped.
Many countries expressed frustration and disappointment at the outcome.
"It's
not about one word or another, it is us being in a position to welcome a
report we commissioned in the first place," said Ruenna Haynes from St
Kitts and Nevis.
"If there is anything ludicrous about the discussion it's that we can't welcome the report," she said to spontaneous applause.
Scientists and campaigners were also extremely disappointed by the outcome.
"We
are really angry and find it atrocious that some countries dismiss the
messages and the consequences that we are facing, by not accepting what
is unequivocal and not acting upon it," said Yamide Dagnet from the
World Resources Institute, and a former climate negotiator for the UK.
Others
noted that Saudi Arabia and the US had supported the report when it was
launched in October. It appears that the Saudis and the US baulked at
the political implications of the UN body putting the IPCC report at its
heart.
"Climate science is not a political football," said Camilla Born, from climate think tank E3G.
"All
the worlds governments - Saudi included - agreed the 1.5C report and we
deserve the truth. Saudi can't argue with physics, the climate will
keep on changing."
Many delegates are now hoping that ministers,
who arrive on Monday, will try and revive efforts to put this key report
at the heart of the conference.
"We hope that the rest of the world will rally and we get a decisive response to the report," said Yamide Dagnet.
"I sincerely hope that all countries will fight that we don't leave COP24 having missed a moment of history."
