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The tension within the Coalition on the issue has burst into the open in recent weeks, driven by Liberal MPs in inner-city seats that could be threatened at the next election by pro-climate action independents like Zali Steggall in Warringah.
Climate policy
While the 2050 battle rages in Australia, the world is talking 2030 |
At present, Australia is unique among wealthy nations in not increasing its 2030 targets.
At the other extreme, Nationals such as senator Matt Canavan think climate change is rubbish and oppose any further commitments.
The position of Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce is hard to follow, but he seems ready to accept further climate commitments providing they are sweetened with some nice deals for his voters, such as funding for an inland rail line.
Amid this confusion, Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie has made the vital point that any decision must be more than a headline and a few bullet points and must also include a detailed plan.
Mr Morrison has all along justified his refusal to commit to 2050 because he says he wants to have a clear plan for how to reach that target.
His ministers have stuck resolutely to this line, as though it was not their job to formulate such a plan.
Clearly, he is concerned that a detailed plan, which would have to make explicit the timetable for closing down coal mines and other fossil-fuel technologies, would only restart the squawking in the Nationals’ barnyard.
Mr Morrison has been so paralysed between these poles that he has not decided whether to attend the Glasgow summit at all. Some of his MPs suggest his absence would barely be noticed.
This is clearly not the case. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made it clear that the success of the Glasgow talks is crucial to the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global warming from crossing catastrophic trigger points within reach.
Glasgow summit
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“I would dearly love the Australian Prime Minister to come,” summit president, British Minister of State Alok Sharma told the Herald, emphasising that a net zero by 2050 goal was no longer enough and that nations had to increase their 2030 goals.
He noted that Australia was one of the world’s major economies, and said he hoped it would embrace emissions reductions of 45 to 50 per cent by 2030.
Australia has yet to update the 26 to 28 per cent 2030 first announced by Tony Abbott, and Mr Morrison is yet to even make his “preference” for net zero by 2050 a hard target.
While accepting Mr Morrison might be preoccupied with a looming federal election, the Herald urges him to use the summit as an opportunity to start thinking long term about one of the greatest threats the world is facing.
The evidence presented by the IPCC in its sixth assessment report in August that the world is warming fast, that climate change is already causing devastation, and that we have very little time to arrest its course before we may lose complete control of it is irrefutable.
Equally, every year, it is becoming clearer that Mr Morrison was wrong to claim during the 2019 election that the ALP’s promise to reach net zero by 2050 was “reckless”.
The falling cost of new renewable energy technologies backed up by battery storage makes them more than competitive with coal-fired power. Electric vehicles and better public transport can replace petrol engines.
Corporates call for action
The global finance, banking and insurance sector is crying out for rapid action and the Liberal Party would do well to listen to what has always been a key part of its constituency.
In NSW, Environment Minister Matt Kean has demonstrated that climate policy can be developed and debated in economic rather than environmental terms, and that action can stimulate economic activity rather than dampen it.
NSW says its emissions reduction drive will attract about $12 billion of investments across the economy by 2030, two-thirds of which is expected to flow into regional communities.
World governments, institutions and trading blocs have now made it clear they will no longer tolerate climate inaction.
Mr Morrison can either attend Glasgow with a credible contribution or he can watch from the sidelines as our peers craft the rules of the new global economy.
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