06/10/2021

Pope, Other Religious Leaders Issue Pre-COP26 Appeal On Climate Change

Reuters - 

Pope Francis takes part in the "Faith and Science: Towards COP26" meeting with other religious leaders ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in November in Britain, at the Vatican, October 4, 2021. Vatican Media/­Handout via REUTERS

Summary
  • Appeal calls for net-zero carbon emissions as soon as possible
  • Global temperature rise should be limited to 1.5 degrees C.
  • Pope is expected to attend start of Glasgow meeting
  • COP26 must respond to "unprecedented ecological crisis"
VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis and other religious leaders made a joint appeal on Monday for next month's U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP26) to offer concrete solutions to save the planet from "an unprecedented ecological crisis".

The "Faith and Science: Towards COP26" meeting brought together Christian leaders including Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, as well as representatives of Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism and Jainism.

"COP26 in Glasgow represents an urgent summons to provide effective responses to the unprecedented ecological crisis and the crisis of values that we are presently experiencing, and in this way to offer concrete hope to future generations," the pope said.

"We want to accompany it with our commitment and our spiritual closeness," he said in an address which he gave to participants instead of reading out in the Vatican's frescoed Hall of Benedictions so that others had more time to speak.

The appeal, which described climate change as a "grave threat", was handed to Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio and Britain's Alok Sharma, president of COP26 in Glasgow.

"The faith leaders who have come here today represent around 3/4 of the world's population. That is by any measure a significant percentage of people across the globe and that's why their voice matters so much," Sharma said after the meeting, which was organised by the Vatican, Britain and Italy.

'War On Creation'

Welby, spiritual leader of the world's Anglicans, called for a "global financial architecture which repents of its past sins", including changes in tax rules to promote green activity.

"We have in the past 100 years declared war on creation... Our war against the climate affects the poorest among us," Welby said.

The appeal urges all governments to adopt plans to help limit the rise in the average global temperature to 1.5 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to achieve net-zero carbon emissions as soon as possible.

Wealthier countries must take the lead in reducing their own emissions and in financing poorer nations' emission reductions, it said.

"We plead with the international community, gathered at COP26, to take speedy, responsible and shared action to safeguard, restore and heal our wounded humanity and the home entrusted to our stewardship," said the appeal, which followed months of online meetings among the 40 or so religious leaders.

Pope Francis takes part in the "Faith and Science: Towards COP26" meeting with other religious leaders ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in November in Britain, at the Vatican, October 4, 2021. Vatican Media/­Handout via REUTERS

Several participants stressed that no nation could go it alone.

"If one nation sinks, we all sink," said Rajwant Singh, a Sikh leader from the United States, who sang a poem for the participants.

In his written address, Francis said cultural and religious differences should be seen as a strength, not a weakness, in defending the environment.

"Each of us has his or her religious beliefs and spiritual traditions, but no cultural, political or social borders or barriers prevent us from standing together," he said.

The Vatican's foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, told Reuters on Sunday he hoped Monday's meeting could "raise ambitions" on what can be achieved at Glasgow.

Scotland's bishops said in July that the pope would attend the opening of COP26, health permitting. A decision is expected in the next few days.

Francis, 84, strongly supports the goals of the 2015 U.N. Paris accord to reduce global warming. He told young people at the weekend that theirs was "perhaps the last generation" to save the planet.

U.S. President Joe Biden returned the United States to the Paris accords after his predecessor Donald Trump pulled it out. Biden and the pope are expected to meet at the Vatican at the end of October.

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(AU SMH) PM Must Find A Way To Fight Warming While Appeasing Nats

Sydney Morning Herald - Editorial


The clock is ticking for Prime Minister Scott Morrison on whether he can develop a climate change policy to take to the Glasgow conference in November that is ambitious enough to be vaguely credible without being so ambitious that it tears the Coalition apart.

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

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Sydney MPs Dave Sharma and Trent Zimmerman among others want the government to take to Glasgow a firm commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050, and to increase 2030 reductions in line with global expectations.

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
Australia’s closest friends, including AUKUS allies the United Kingdom and the United States have said tackling climate change is a top priority.

 “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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(AU The Age) ‘Do More’: COP26 President Urges Morrison To Make Climate Top Priority

The Age - Bevan Shields

London: The minister in charge of next month’s crunch Glasgow climate summit has challenged Australia to nearly double its 2030 emissions reduction target and urged Prime Minister Scott Morrison to attend the talks in person.

Alok Sharma, the president of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, framed Morrison’s participation as a test of Australia’s friendship with Britain, warning the ravages of global warming cannot be avoided unless world leaders make Glasgow their top priority.

COP26 President Alok Sharma outside Downing Street. Credit: Getty

“I would dearly love the Australian Prime Minister to come,” Sharma said in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

“I can understand that every leader will have to take into account what is going on domestically but COP26 really matters and we want to see as many world leaders as possible.

“You’re some of our closest mates in the world, and we need you by our side to demonstrate the unity of purpose that is going to be really essential at this summit.”

Sharma, a cabinet minister who was elevated to the COP26 presidency by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson earlier this year, has been rallying support for a new pact that would bind the world to deeper emissions cuts, a faster phase-out of coal and more cash for poorer nations.

Morrison has not decided whether to fly to Glasgow but is preparing to take to cabinet and backbench MPs a formal policy of net-zero emissions by 2050. He is also under pressure to lift Australia’s existing goal of cutting pollution by 26 to 28 per cent by 2030, although that will be much harder to find agreement on.

A story 300 million years in the making, from its beginnings as prehistoric rotting plants to the world's dirtiest little fuel.

Warning the world was at a “critical juncture”, Sharma said embracing net zero by 2050 was not enough. He cited the UK’s goal of slashing dangerous carbon emissions by at least 68 per cent by 2030 and Japan’s promise of a 46 to 50 per cent cut.

“Australia is a major world economy,” Sharma said. “And if you compare to where other major world economies are, I hope that we could get to 45 to 50 per cent from Australia.

“That would mean they’d be comparable with other major economies in the world.”

Labor took a 45 per cent target by 2030 to the 2019 federal election – a policy the government claimed would take a “wrecking ball” to the economy. Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has since called Labor’s pledge “a mistake”.

But the NSW Liberal government last week promised to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent by 2030, building on the same policy unveiled by the Victorian Labor government earlier this year.

Sharma said he has had candid conversations with the Australian government over the need to make much deeper cuts before the end of the decade.

“I say to them basically what I say to everyone, which is that we need to do more. If we want to ensure that we are at a point of net zero by the middle of the century, then we have to have ambitious 2030 emission-reduction targets which align with that goal.”

Climate policy
A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in August found a 45 per cent cut by 2030 was essential to meeting the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees.

“But on the current trajectory, we will see an increase of 16 per cent in emissions by 2030 rather than a reduction,” Sharma said. A spokesperson for the Prime Minister said Australia would take part in the COP26 summit and had a strong record of “meeting and beating” its emissions reduction commitments.

“We are working closely with the UK on the technology advances that will be needed for the world to transition to a net zero economy. Technology not taxes is the way to tackle climate change, keep the lights on and keep people in jobs. This will continue to be at the heart of Australia’s response.”

The government has promised to release an updated 2030 projection and its long-term strategy ahead of the Glasgow meeting.

The more ambitious action from NSW and Victoria could help the government lift its 2030 target of a 26 to 28 per cent cut to something approaching 35 per cent, but the politics within the Coalition is fraught and most cabinet ministers still do not know what Morrison is planning just three weeks out from the Glasgow summit.

Sharma said the urgency of the climate crisis warranted bold decisions from Australia.

“Australia is a great friend, and I really want one of my closest mates to come to my party and I want them to sing the same songs,” he said.

“And that in a climate context means more ambition on cutting emissions and it means more support in terms of financing for developing countries.”

Asked whether it was possible to achieve net-zero emissions without a price on carbon – which Morrison and Albanese are opposed to – Sharma stressed the international landscape was shifting rapidly.

“I mean, even China now has an emissions trading scheme,” he said.

“It is internationally acknowledged that countries are going to have to domestically and internationally address the whole issue of carbon pricing and carbon leakage – every country will have to get there.

“And so my advice to any country is to start to think about this now.”

Sharma also thanked the Morrison government and Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor for assisting Pacific islands attendees with travel to the Glasgow event.

More than 20,000 people are expected to arrive in the Scottish city during the first two weeks of November.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has made climate change a key plank of his leadership. Credit: Getty
Johnson recently said the gathering would be held “in the full glare of the global spotlight”.

“And when the summit ends, when most of the world has committed to decisive, game-changing action, it will be clear to all which of us has lacked the courage to step up,” he said.

“The world will see, and your people will remember, and history will judge.”

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