(AU Canberra Times) Public Sector Informant: Reducing Greenhouse Emissions Will Take A Group Effort - Including From Australia

Canberra Times - Stephen Bartos

A firefighter passes a burning home as the Dixie Fire flares in California. Picture: AP

Author Stephen Bartos is a Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University. He was Professor of Governance and Director of the National Institute of Governance at the University of Canberra, and is a former deputy secretary of the Commonwealth Department of Finance.  Stephen Bartos is the author of Against the Grain - The AWB Scandal and Why it Happened.

In recent weeks we have seen extreme climate events, from devastating wildfires in the United States to widespread flooding in Europe.

They are linked to climate change - further support, if any were needed, to the determination of most of the world to address the climate crisis.

It is almost obligatory to note that it is not possible to attribute an individual event to climate change; but that's not the point. Climate change is making extreme weather events like these more frequent and more extreme. That applies both to the US wildfires (we call similar events bushfires) and to Europe's floods.

The same will apply as extreme events - including cyclones, drought, flooding and bushfires - affect Australia with greater frequency in the future.

There are however four outlier countries whose policies, according to the Guardian, differ: China, Russia, Brazil and Australia. The report suggests that if the rest of the world followed these countries' policies the global temperature would rise by 5 per cent: a catastrophic outcome.

That conclusion was based on the non-partisan Paris Equity Check website developed by the University of Melbourne. This country grouping is not a club Australia would normally be comfortable joining. We have more in common with countries like the UK and US whose climate change policies and programs are far more ambitious than ours.

Their main talking point is that Australia contributes only 1.3 per cent of global carbon emissions, so nothing we do will make a significant difference. That argument is wrong. It needs to be put down.

If Australia is concerned that the rest of the world should take action on climate change, the most effective way to ensure that happens is ourselves to take action - helping establish a global norm.

Does this mean that countries with lower emissions should not bother? The argument is often raised in the context of what is asserted to be relative inaction by China (although the Chinese government would dispute that). It is a complicated story.

Moreover, the second highest emitter, the US, is engaged in serious efforts to reduce emissions, as is the third, the European Union.

There is a long history of analysis of collective action problems in economics. They are common. Examples include: taxation - why bother to pay tax, your tax payment is not going to make much difference to the country, it is only a tiny percentage of the total; voting - your vote makes hardly any difference to the result, so why bother; vaccination - if you get vaccinated it will make only a small difference to the total percentage of the population who are: yet that collective number of small impacts means the difference between a vulnerable or a relatively safe population.

Additional carbon emissions will worsen the impacts of climate change. Picture: Shutterstock

One of our major insurers runs an advertisement showing commuters lifting a train off a person trapped underneath (based on a real incident at Stirling railway station in Perth). They all contributed. It would have been easy for smaller commuters to stand back and say "there's a couple of big, strong blokes over there whose efforts will make more of a difference than mine" (you can call them China and the US). The people on that platform all pitched in to help. The same applies with climate change.

This is already happening in Australia. Despite relative inaction by governments, households have the world's highest uptake of rooftop solar power; financial institutions are increasingly demanding commitment to action on climate change before investing in a company; corporations themselves are adopting renewables and reducing emissions.

Does that apply internationally? Absolutely it does. Global norms about how countries should behave influence what governments do. They become institutions. In many cases international treaties and agreements emerge long after the institution. For example, norms on how to treat diplomats were in place well before they were formalised in the 1961 Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations.

There are other arguments as to why the 1.3 per cent argument is misleading, including that Australia has one of the highest per capita emissions rates in the world, and that coal exports mean our actual contribution to climate change is far higher. They are valid, but we don't need them.

The nature of climate change as a collective action problem provides a full and sufficient reason to reject the 1.3 per cent argument. For collective action problems to be solved, everyone has to contribute, small as well as large.

Links

• (The Guardian) Plans Of Four G20 States Are Threat To Global Climate Pledge, Warn Scientists 
• Australia: 2100-Warming As A Function Of National 2030 Emissions
• 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) - Wikipedia
• CO2 emissions: nations' pledges 'far away' from Paris target, says UN
• The world gallops to Glasgow while Australia trundles the other way
• US urges Australia to adopt ‘more ambitious climate goals’ as pressure mounts on Morrison to act
• Crunch time looming for Morrison on climate as the world looks to Australia to act