10/10/2021

(AU The Guardian) Angus Taylor Advised By Department That IPCC Climate Report Was ‘Balanced’, Documents Show

The Guardian - 

Emissions reduction minister told to expect more vigorous calls for ambitious targets before Barnaby Joyce declined to endorse findings
Australia’s emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, received a four-page briefing from his department just before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its new report. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Australian government officials privately advised Angus Taylor that the latest international report on climate science was “balanced and transparent” before Barnaby Joyce later refused to endorse some of the key findings.

Amid government divisions on climate policy in the lead-up to the Glasgow Cop26 conference, Guardian Australia can reveal Taylor’s department also told him to expect intensified calls “for more ambitious climate targets, such as net zero emissions by 2050 or earlier”.

Taylor, the emissions reduction minister, received a four-page briefing from his department just before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its new report in August.

The industry department also provided Taylor with “updated talking points” and a “media handling strategy” – although those attachments were not included in the document released to Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws (FoI).

“It is the department’s view that the report provides a detailed, balanced and transparent assessment that addresses Australia’s comments submitted during the final government review,” stated the ministerial submission sent on 9 August.

Taylor and the Liberals largely accepted the IPCC report, with Taylor saying on its release that “Australia is committed to achieving net zero emissions as soon as possible, and preferably by 2050”.

However, three weeks after its release, Joyce, who as the leader of the Nationals will be crucial to the outcome of the government’s climate policy negotiations, declined to endorse specific IPCC findings.

At a National Press Club event on 3 September, the deputy prime minister likened questions from the Guardian about whether he agreed with several key findings from the report to a baptism where parents were required to “denounce Satan and all his works and deeds”.

Joyce said he was “not going to stand here and sort of be berated into complying” with such statements.

When presented with several statements from the 40-page summary for policymakers, Joyce said he would not “participate in some sort of kangaroo court of now you will agree to every statement I say because the IPCC said it”.

He said only that he believed “humans have an influence on climate”, without specifying how much of an influence.

But the department’s briefing to Taylor on the IPCC report noted that the summary for policymakers “was approved line by line in an IPCC member government approval session from 26 July to 6 August 2021” and represented a balanced outcome.

“The report is expected to attract significant media attention and intensify calls for more ambitious climate targets, such as net zero emissions by 2050 or earlier,” the department told Taylor.

Download original document

The department said the key messages from the report included that it was “unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”.

The briefing said this was the IPCC’s strongest statement on human influence to date “and builds on a similar finding in its Fifth Assessment Report in 2013 which found that human influence was ‘clear’”.

The briefing also noted that “limiting human-induced global warming to a specific level requires reaching at least net zero CO2 emissions, along with strong reductions in other greenhouse gas emissions”.

“Stakeholders might use the report’s release as an opportunity to amplify calls for near term action to reduce methane emissions, noting its greater warming impact compared to carbon dioxide on a tonne for tonne basis, over a 100-year time horizon,” it stated.

Three paragraphs in the briefing were blacked out in the version released to Guardian Australia apparently because of a potential impact on foreign relations.

The briefing was prepared for Taylor and there is no indication Joyce received it.

Pressure builds on Australia

Australia is facing sustained diplomatic pressure, including from the US and the UK, to strengthen its climate policies, including its 2030 target, which remains at the Abbott-era level of a 26% to 28% cut compared with 2005.

The FoI decision-maker said of the redactions: “I am satisfied this material contains opinions and confidential information about issues of sensitivity between Australia and various foreign countries and the release of this material would inhibit or prejudice future negotiations between the Australian government and the government of these countries.”

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, pushed back at diplomatic pressure on Thursday, saying he would not “make any suggestions as to what other countries should be doing”.

Addressing reporters outside the Lodge in Canberra, Morrison said the government would be “working through” the details of its climate plan “over the next few weeks”, arguing it had been “a very good faith process” to date.

Morrison did not rule out accepting a controversial proposal to create a $250bn loan facility for the resources sector in return for National party backing for a net zero emissions target.

The resources minister, Keith Pitt, has proposed that taxpayers underwrite fossil fuel financing and insurance, but the idea has been met with scorn by metropolitan Liberals.

 The Australia Institute, a progressive thinktank, plans to launch a new television advertising campaign that accuses the government of “trying to cheat on climate action again”.

“Their plan for net zero emissions by 2050 is a fraud if gas and coal are allowed to expand,” the narrator says in a 30-second ad expected to air from Monday.

Richie Merzian, the climate and energy program director at the Australia Institute, said actions spoke louder than words.

“While the prime minister is poised to announce a net zero by 2050 target, we can see from this government’s actions that it has little intention of meeting such a target, let alone beating it,” Merzian said.

With the Asian Development Bank preparing to decide on a new energy policy that is likely to include an end to financing coal projects, a Treasury spokesperson said on Thursday the Australian government was “currently considering its position”.

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(AU AFR) Australia’s Business Leaders Tell PM How To Hit Net Zero By 2050

AFR - Phillip Coorey | Jacob Greber

More than 130 of Australia’s biggest companies have told the federal government a strategy to reach net zero by 2050 not only makes environmental sense but could grow jobs and the economy in the process.

As the Prime Minister enters a critical 10 days trying to negotiate a deal with the Nationals ahead of the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, the Business Council of Australia has provided ammunition for his case with its own technology road map detailing how to hit the target and achieve far deeper cuts by 2030 than are currently targeted.

Business Council of Australia president Tim Reed says climate change needs solutions, not more endless debate. Alex Ellinghausen
The plan, underpinned by modelling by Deloitte Access Economics, estimates that if every sector of the economy plays a role, the economy could grow $890 billion bigger than otherwise in today’s dollars in the 50 years to 2070.

Rather than jobs being destroyed, the modelling says a modest 195,000 net jobs would also be created over the next 50 years

BCA president Tim Reed said the bulk of the economic dividend would be realised in the regions.

Before the last election, the BCA described Labor’s 2030 target of a 45 per cent emissions cut over 2005 levels as “economy wrecking”.

But its modelling shows that, based on current available technology, it is both “pragmatic and ambitious” to reduce emissions by between 46 per cent and 50 per cent over 2005 levels by 2030.

While the 2030 targets are optimal, the BCA setting an early ambitious target will speed up investment in new technology and make the task easier over the longer term.


BCA chief executive Jennifer Westacott said the exercise was to show net zero could be done, even if the requisite technologies had not all been developed.

“The fundamental question is how do we get to net zero by 2050, that’s what we tried to do,” she said.

The BCA modelling, which the organisation says is supported by its membership, is led by business investment which would be driven by an expanded and enhanced safeguard mechanism requiring more of Australia’s biggest polluters to pay for their emissions by removing a technical exemption.

This would be done by reducing the eligibility threshold for emitters from 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year to 25,000 tonnes. There would be support for internationally exposed, emissions-intensive sectors, just as was originally proposed more than a decade ago when Labor tried to tackle climate change.

Technology-based reductions

 Fledgling technologies including hydrogen and carbon capture and storage would be needed for the plan to work.

Scott Morrison is currently negotiating with Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce a technology-based deal to achieve net zero by 2050, to be announced before next month’s Glasgow climate change summit.

It is also likely the government, based on current projections, will unveil a 2030 emissions reduction target higher than the current 26 per cent to 28 per cent. The new target is expected to be in the mid-30s.

The BCA strategy says the electricity sector would have to make the biggest contribution to its 2030 target with 61 per cent of emissions reductions. This would require a four-fold increase in the uptake of renewable energy this decade, enough to generate an extra 30 gigawatts at an investment cost of $50 billion.

This would result in clean energy constituting 85 per cent of the mix by 2030, and 99 per cent by 2040 and 2050.

Industry, transport and agriculture

 The next biggest contribution would be made by the industry sector, which would account for 24 per cent of the overall emissions reductions. These reductions would be achieved through such measures as moving from diesel to gas and renewables, and adopting carbon capture and storage.

Transport would contribute a 10 per cent reduction in nationwide emissions through heavy investment in electric vehicles.

The BCA plan calls for 22 per cent of cars to be electric by 2030, up from the government’s current target of 7 per cent. As well, 10 per cent of trucks would be hydrogen-fuelled by 2030.

The agriculture and land sectors, which the Nationals have demanded be exempt from the net zero plan, would contribute 5 per cent of reductions, but largely through offset measures. Some measures, such a methane supplements and fertiliser management, would be highly dependent on the commercial viability of technologies still in their infancy.

As for the BCA’s membership, “overwhelmingly they see this as an opportunity”.

Global rules for risk disclosures

 Separately, as pressure builds on government over climate change, a group representing more than two-thirds of Australia’s investment industry and over $100 trillion in assets under management globally is pressing Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe to work with their most powerful counterparts on creating consistent global rules for climate risk disclosures.

To avoid a mishmash of national rules and standards, the investors group wants Mr Frydenberg and Dr Lowe to use next week’s Group of 20 central bankers and finance ministers meeting, hosted by Italy, to join global efforts for common transparency rules.

Australia should phase in by 2024 economy-wide rules set out by the global Task Force for Climate-Related Financial Disclosure.

“Without an international approach and commitments from nations to integrate and build on international baseline standards in domestic legal frameworks, we risk market fragmentation that could impede the flow of global capital,” said Erwin Jackson, director of policy at the Investor Group on Climate Change.

A letter penned by the group was sent to the government and central bank two weeks after Mr Frydenberg backed the push to net zero by 2050 with a warning that “markets are moving” towards a lower-emissions future.

“It’s a long-term shift, not a short-term shock” he said at the time. “Trillions of dollars are being mobilised globally in support of the transition.”

Australia’s official debt agency, the Australian Office of Financial Management, says around a third of its recent meetings with domestic and offshore investors have included discussions about Australia’s environmental and climate-related promises.

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(AU SMH) How Australia Got Blindsided In The Great Pacific Climate Coup

Sydney Morning Herald - Nick O'Malley

As the Glasgow climate talks loomed closer this week Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama addressed an international forum hosted by the former US vice president Al Gore, with slightly more than customary bluntness.

A little greyer and a touch softer than when he led a coup to take power for his first term in 2006, there was still a whiff of the hard man about him.

Strong words: Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama at COP23 climate change conference in Bonn, Germany in 2017. Credit: AP

Pacific leaders, he said, were tired of commending the resilience of their people in confronting a warming world and the rising seas.

They would no longer accept the role of “canary in the world’s coal mines”, they would not be the world’s “helpless songbirds”.

And then as current chair of the Pacific Islands Forum he listed priorities.

“Fiji and the Pacific’s demands are clear,” he said. “The developed world must deliver on the $100 billion dollars promised in climate finance.” He mentioned Australia and New Zealand specifically.


This language might have surprised international onlookers used to the climate debate focussing on emission reductions. And who is Fiji and its 13 Pacific partners to be issuing demands to the world?

Those with an eye on the history of high-stakes climate negotiations knew better.

The 1.5 degree drive-by

You need to know a little climate politics to understand the flex.

The Paris Agreement today commits each nation to do their utmost to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in keeping with holding global warming beneath 2 degrees and as close to 1.5 degrees as possible.

Today that lower target, 1.5 degrees, has become the focus of the world’s discussion.

But leading up to the Paris climate talks in 2015, 1.5 degrees was barely even a consideration, even though climate scientists agreed it was the point at which we stood a better chance of avoiding potentially cataclysmic climate tipping points.

The target only exists in the Paris Agreement because of a diplomatic ambush set by one of the world’s smallest nations - the Marshall Islands, population about 60,000.

That was then: Foreign Minister Julie Bishop hugs then Marshall Islands minister Tony de Brum at the Paris climate summit. Credit: Andrew McLeish
Then Marshallese foreign minister Tony deBrum recognised that while 2 degrees warming might be tolerable to other parts of the world, it would obliterate many Pacific communities and nations.

Under the slogan “1.5 to stay alive” deBrum began gathering support for an international coalition that would later become known as the High Ambition Coalition (HAC).

When the Paris talks began no one outside the group knew of its existence, but deBrum had already managed to secure the support firstly of Pacific island nations and then other small island countries in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean.

Some African nations came on board later. The EU also backed the grouping, and when the negotiations started to bite, the group managed to pull the United States on board.

Finally, more than a week into Paris negotiations, the HAC “broke cover” as Dr Wesley Morgan, researcher at the Climate Council and research fellow at Griffith Asia Institute, put it in a recent essay in the Australian journal Foreign Affairs.

The moment was dramatic. DeBrum walked towards the final session of the Paris talks flanked by the Spanish politician serving as European energy commissioner, Miguel Arias Cañete, and the US chief climate negotiator Todd Stern.

The three had palm fronds woven into their lapels to symbolise their common purpose. The Marshallese statesman also had the votes of 90 nations in his pocket.


World leaders, diplomats and staffers suddenly realised they’d been wrong-footed.

Australia, the Pacific big brother that used to boast of punching above its diplomatic weight did not even know the bloc existed before this moment.

“We could not have gotten a Paris Agreement without the incredible efforts and hard work of the island nations,” said then US President Barack Obama the following year of the efforts of deBrum and the group he corralled.

Australia’s then foreign minister Julie Bishop announced that we too would join the HAC. The problem was Australia was short on entry requirements.

“We are delighted to learn of Australia’s interest and look forward to hearing what more they may be able to do to join our coalition,” said deBrum.

The $100 billion compromise

So when laying out the demands of the Pacific Island Forum this week Bainimarama was not speaking, entirely, as a minnow in an ocean of whales. And the $100 billion in climate finance he demanded was not a figure plucked from the sky.

He was referring to a commitment made by wealthy nations in previous climate talks that began to take shape in 2009, and that has never been met.

The agreement is based on a fairly obvious inequity.

Industrialised nations have been dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, and have made themselves rich doing so. Poorer nations are only now going through that process.

The urgency of the climate crisis dictates that all nations must rapidly reduce their emissions, including - especially - emerging economies now reliant on heavy, dirty industry.

Recognising that greening the planet meant that poorer countries could not burn carbon as the richer world had, a payoff was agreed to during UN talks in Copenhagen in 2009.

Rich nations would “mobilise” $100 billion in finance each year by 2020 to help developing nations go greener faster.

A so-called Green Climate Fund would manage the effort.

The problem was, says one of Australia’s former chief climate diplomats, Professor Howard Bamsey, the language built into the agreement to ensure it won support, was loose enough to be almost meaningless.

Mobilise, he says, “is one of those UN verbs, so you have to parse it very carefully”.

It was never made clear, he explains, if “mobilising finance” meant giving grants or facilitating cheap loans or creating policies to help funnel private money.

Whatever it means, no matter how hard you “parse it”, you never get anywhere near $100 billion a year on a ledger.

It is hard today to work out how much money was ever secured. By some counts the most funding achieved in a year was $20 billion. By a recent OECD analysis it is closer to $80 billion, if you count finance channelled directly between nations rather than through the Green Climate Fund.

But Bamsey says the purpose of the fund was more than a practical climate response. It served to bind nations in common effort, and its failure to date is a blow to the global climate accord.

Australia once placed itself at the heart of the project, recognising it as an effective way to channel global support for the Pacific. Bamsey himself was appointed executive director of the GFC in 2016.

In an early round of funding Australia committed $200 million to the effort but in 2018 Prime Minister Scott Morrison said during a radio interview with Alan Jones that kicked off with a discussion of their mutual support for a horse racing advertisement to be projected onto the sails of the Opera House that Australia would no longer be contributing to “that big climate fund”.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Fiji’s Frank Bainimarama during his official visit to Parliament House in Canberra in 2019. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Later in Senate estimates hearings foreign affairs staff confirmed that this comment constituted the announcement that Australia would no longer be part of the Green Climate Fund, though the nation’s foreign aid to the Pacific continued.

So what next?

DeBrum died in 2017. He’d perhaps be surprised to see how much the world has changed since then.

Carbon emissions are still trending up rather than down, but there is now a consensus that clean energy is cheaper than dirty alternatives. Around 70 per cent of the global economy exists in jurisdictions that are committed to reducing emissions to net-zero by 2050.

Both the United States, the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, and China, the current one, back rapid decarbonisation.

We don’t know if another bloc like the High Ambition Coalition is being quietly built as Glasgow approaches, or what the HAC itself has planned.

We know that Italy has become a crossroads for international officials this month as it prepares to hold G20 talks and act as co-host to the COP26 conference in Glasgow in November.

And, due to a Twitter post by Grenada’s environment minister Simon Stiell, we know that in Milan this week US President Joe Biden’s infamously indefatigable climate envoy John Kerry made time to meet with another negotiator, the Marshall Islands climate envoy Tina Stege.

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