Even this country’s closest friends are going leave us exposed as a laggard ahead of the crunch COP meeting in Glasgow.
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Australia, unlike its leading allies, has been reluctant to step up
the pace of decarbonisation. Peter Rae |
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Author
Robyn Eckersley
is Redmond Barry distinguished professor of political science at
the University of Melbourne
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The Paris Agreement is built around a ratcheting-up mechanism. Parties to the agreement submitted pledges – known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) – in 2015. These pledges must be enhanced every five years.
In 2020, parties with 2025 targets were to submit new 2030 targets and policies, while those with 2030 targets – all parties other than the US – are required to update or enhance their 2030 targets.
However, many parties missed the 2020 deadline due to the pandemic. Instead, this year we will see which countries have stepped up their ambition, and which have shirked their responsibilities.
Australia is an internationally renowned climate laggard, routinely appearing close to the very bottom of the annual Climate Change Performance Index. This year, Australia will be under diplomatic pressure on multiple fronts to do more, but especially from its closest allies, the US, and Britain as the host of the 26th annual climate conference (COP26) in Glasgow in November.
The Biden administration has rejoined the Paris Agreement and embarked on a major climate diplomatic offensive in the lead-up to Glasgow. Joe Biden’s comprehensive executive order on tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad, issued on January 27, makes it clear that he intends to outdo Barack Obama as a climate leader.
Domestically, Biden has committed to a US$2 trillion ($2.6 trillion) investment plan to revitalise US infrastructure and industry, much of which is devoted to an energy transition and green manufacturing and jobs. This includes reaching a target of 100 per cent carbon-free electricity by 2035, promoting electric vehicles (including a zero-emissions bus fleet by 2030), and ending fossil fuel subsidies.
It’s going to take a lot more than money to repair Australia’s tattered international reputation on climate change.
Biden has also appointed John Kerry as his special climate envoy. Kerry played a key role in ensuring US-China co-operation in the run-up to the Paris Agreement in 2015, and has likened failure to address climate change to a “mutual suicide pact”.
Kerry is working closely with Alok Sharma, the British president of COP26, to find ways of closing the “emissions gap” between what is pledged under existing NDCs and what is needed to keep global warming below 2 degrees.
Scientists warn that global emissions need to halve by 2030 to ensure a reasonable chance of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees. This means that rich countries should be cutting their emissions by substantially more than 50 per cent, given their obligation to lead under the burden-sharing principles of the regime.
There is also a large “climate finance gap”. Developed countries have failed to mobilise the US$100 billion required annually by 2020. Talks will aim to set a new and higher goal by 2025. Adequate climate finance is a condition precedent for poorer countries to pursue both mitigation and adaptation.
The next milestone on the road to Glasgow is Biden’s climate summit for major economies, scheduled for Earth Day on April 22. This is also the crucial moment when the US is expected to announce its 2030 NDC.
The US’s 2015 NDC was to reduce emissions by 26 to 28 per cent by 2025 from 2005 levels. Australia’s NDC copied the US target and baseline, but with a deadline of 2030. Australia’s official Climate Change Authority (since defunded and largely ignored) had recommended a 2025 target of at least 30 per cent reduction, and a 2030 target in the range of 40 to 60 per cent.
Emissions reduction ambitions
Laurence Tubiana, who served as France’s climate ambassador at the Paris negotiations and is now head of the European Climate Foundation, has argued that the US must commit to a cut of at least 50 per cent by 2030. Boris Johnson has scaled up Britain’s commitment to 68 per cent by 2030 from 1990 levels. Norway, a major gas and oil exporter, has updated its 2030 target to at least 50 per cent, while Germany’s is 55 per cent.
A report by the Australian Climate Targets Panel, an independent group of senior climate scientists and policymakers, has recommended Australia’s 2030 target should be updated to minus 50 per cent.
Australia will be under huge pressure to do more than minus 26 to 28 per cent, especially if the US goes to minus 50 per cent or beyond. The problem for Biden is that Australia already formally reported its “updated” 2030 NDC on the last day of 2020, during the summer holiday season when no one was paying attention.
This “update” simply restated the existing target of 26to 28 per cent by emphasising that it is a minimum that Australia will “meet and beat”.
The only new policy on display is Angus Taylor’s technology road map, which has been widely condemned for including gas. The government has no new national renewable energy target or credible decarbonisation strategy and has merely expressed a desire to reach net zero emissions “preferably” by 2050.
Whether Biden and Kerry, or Johnson and Sharma, can persuade the Morrison government to lift its game is an open question.
One important area of leverage for the US is climate finance. Here Australia will be under the spotlight for cancelling its future contributions to the Green Climate Fund, the primary mechanism under the climate regime to assist developing countries with mitigation and adaptation.
Resuming contributions to the Green Climate Fund might provide one avenue for possible redemption for the Morrison government at Biden’s summit, but it’s going to take a lot more than money to repair Australia’s tattered international reputation on climate change.
Links
- (AU) The carbon-cutting technology road map explained
- (AU) Forget coal, the new roadmap is a gas guzzler
- (AU) PM inches closer to net zero by 2050
- (AU) Australia stops payments to Green Climate Fund
- The Paris Agreement
- (AU) Australian carbon prices tipped to double by 2030
- (AU) A five-step climate action plan for super funds
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