12/12/2021

(Huffington Post) Young People Worldwide Are Extremely Anxious About The Climate Crisis

Huffington Post - Sarah Ruiz-Grossman

Nearly 60% of young people are “very” or “extremely” worried about the climate crisis, and 45% say this negatively affects their daily life and functioning.

Hundreds of young climate activists rally outside the White House on June 28 to demand President Joe Biden work to make the proposals of the Green New Deal into laws. Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images
Young people around the world are extremely worried about the climate crisis and are particularly frustrated at governments’ inaction in the face of the planet’s bleaker future, according to a new survey.

The study, published in the science journal The Lancet Planetary Health, surveyed 10,000 people ages 16 to 25 across 10 countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Finland, Australia, Portugal, India, Nigeria, the Philippines and Brazil.

Nearly 60% of young people surveyed said they were “very” or “extremely” worried about climate change, and 45% said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning.

In what study authors — from the University of Bath, New York University Langone Health, Stanford, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and other academic institutions — described as the largest, most global survey of climate anxiety in young people, nearly two-thirds of young people said their governments were not doing enough to avoid a climate catastrophe, and 58% felt governments were “betraying me and/or future generations”.

Three-quarters of young respondents said they believe “the future is frightening”, and 56% felt “humanity is doomed”.

“I grew up being afraid of drowning in my own bedroom,” said Mitzi Tan, a 23-year-old from the Philippines, in the study’s release.

“Society tells me that this anxiety is an irrational fear that needs to be overcome — one that meditation and healthy coping mechanisms will ‘fix,’” the young climate activist added.

“But that erases the accountability from those who are directly causing this fear. At its root, our climate anxiety comes from this deep-set feeling of betrayal because of government inaction. To truly address our growing climate anxiety, we need justice.” The United Nations’ latest climate report repeated what similar reports have been saying for years, with even greater certainty: Humans are the “unequivocal” cause of climate change, and the window to avoid catastrophic living conditions worldwide due to global warming is rapidly closing.

The communities most vulnerable to climate change — including those experiencing slower recoveries in the aftermath of climate disasters — are disproportionately poor, Black and Latinx.

This year alone, we’ve seen the hottest July ever recorded on the planet (again), the largest single wildfire in California history (again) and deadly Hurricane Ida in the U.S. causing devastating flooding from the Gulf Coast through the Northeast (again).

“Our children’s anxiety is a completely rational reaction given the inadequate responses to climate change they are seeing from governments,” study co-author Caroline Hickman of the University of Bath said in a release. “What more do governments need to hear to take action?”

If you’re feeling anxious about the climate crisis, click here for some ways to help manage your mental health.
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(AU SMH) As My People Move To Higher Ground, We Need Australia To Rise Above Its Dangerous Addiction To Coal

Sydney Morning Herald - Frank Bainimarama

Author
Less than one month ago I returned from COP26 – one of the most critical global climate meetings in a generation.

The Fijian delegation went to Glasgow with the interests of the Pacific and Small Island Developing States at the centre of our approach. We knew from experience that we were involved in a long-term process.

But we also knew that COP26 needed to resolve, as a matter of urgency, a number of issues that were holding up progress on both mitigation of climate change and adaptation to its impacts.

Some Fijians are already retreating to higher ground. Credit: Tourism Fiji

While we were pleased that the parties agreed to stay on track to keep warming to under 1.5 degrees, we are deeply concerned that the pledges made so far will not take us there.

It is also clear that many, including Australia, have placed far too much emphasis on net zero by 2050, given that the best hope for limiting temperature rise to below 1.5 degrees is contingent on what we do between now and 2030.

The agreement in the Glasgow climate pact to review and upgrade 2030 targets by 2022 was therefore one of the most welcome outcomes of COP26.

All signatory parties will have to bring greater ambition and more robust policies to COP27 next year, particularly the largest emitters – and Australia is in the top 20 of global emitters.

We encourage Australia to reconsider its recent comments that it will not revisit its 2030 targets. The opportunity to contest this vital tenet of the pact was during COP26, not after it.

While COP26 did not achieve the scale of commitments we need on the whole, it did provide us with the language and decisions needed to increase pressure on those who continue to prefer to drag their feet and shirk their share of the burden.

We also need to see more ambition from the Australian government on its dangerous addiction to coal. We understand the place coal occupies in the Australian economy and in Australian history and culture but we need to further explore how we take this option off the table.

Australia is not only in an influential position to phase out coal sales globally; it is in a position to become a centre for global energy innovation with its abundance of renewable energy potential.

Prime ministers Scott Morrison and Frank Bainimarama at the COP26 summit in Glasgow in November. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The impacts and costs of climate change are all too real for Pacific islanders, and we can’t escape the science.

In light of this reality, Fiji went to Glasgow with some very specific objectives on financing for adaptation.

We had struggled to get developed countries to follow through on their commitment to mobilise $100 billion a year by 2020. Since Glasgow, we now have an agreement for independent monitoring of those commitments to ensure we achieve the $100 billion target as soon as possible.

In that vein, I commend Australia for its new Indo-Pacific Carbon Offset Scheme (IPCOS). Trading in carbon credits will help fill the gaps in financing for adaptation. It is not a long-term solution, nor is it an alternative to action to rapidly drive down carbon emissions, but the system has merit.

Australia’s IPCOS will mean that Fijian resource owners and investors in renewable energy can generate carbon units that can be sold to Australian companies at an attractive price.

Empowered by the legal framework established by our new Climate Change Act, this creates strong incentives to keep natural resources intact in Fiji and attract investments in nature-based solutions.

We are also very pleased that Australia pledged to increase its climate finance commitment by $A500 million for the Pacific and south-east Asia.

Agreements like this recognise that, ultimately, the stakes are the same for all of us – survival, plain and simple. Just as we are moving communities to high ground to escape sea-level rise, we keep hold of the moral high ground, and we believe that requires us to do more.

We are one of the first countries – if not the first – to adopt a Climate Change Act which means government ministries must now seriously consider the climate impact of every program, every initiative and every expenditure.

A growing majority of governments and businesses have discarded the tired notion that economic progress and environmental protection are at odds. Profitable business, strong economies and effective climate action go hand in hand.

By taking advantage of the market potential that lies in carbon neutrality, government and business can drive faster decarbonisation – and help avert climate catastrophe.

It is time to create a new era for the planet we call home.

Political leaders – if they are worthy of the term – have critical levers for change at their disposal.

Businesses, state and local governments, local communities, civic organisations, organised labour, faith communities and people everywhere must also champion change.

If we can muster courage and good will – and if we seriously consider the price we will pay if our efforts fall short – then I trust we will prevail.

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(Truthout) How Big Oil Rigs The System To Keep Winning

Truthout -  | 

Climate activists demonstrate outside the gates of the Mossmorran petrochemical refinery near Cowdenbeath, Scotland, to protest against flaring and pollution at the plant on August 1, 2021. Jane Barlow / PA Images via Getty Images

Authors
  • Naomi Oreskes is professor of the history of science and affiliated professor of earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University. She is co-author, with Erik Conway, of Merchants of Doubt. Her latest book is Why Trust Science?
  •  is the author of Poison Tea, which exposed for the first time the close ties between the tobacco industry and Koch donor network front groups.
  • This article is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate story.
Despite countless investigations, lawsuits, social shaming, and regulations dating back decades, the oil and gas industry remains formidable. After all, it has made consuming its products seem like a human necessity.

It has confused the public about climate science, bought the eternal gratitude of one of America’s two main political parties, and repeatedly out-maneuvered regulatory efforts.

And it has done all this in part by thinking ahead and then acting ruthlessly. While the rest of us were playing checkers, its executives were playing three-dimensional chess.

Take this brief tour of the industry’s history, and then ask yourself: Is there any doubt that these companies are now plotting to keep the profits rolling in, even as mega-hurricanes and roaring wildfires scream the dangers of the climate emergency?

The John D. Rockefeller Myth

Ida Tarbell is one of the most celebrated investigative journalists in American history. Long before Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein exposed the Watergate scandal, Tarbell’s reporting broke up the Standard Oil monopoly.

In 19 articles that became a widely read book, History of the Standard Oil Company, published in 1904, she exposed its unsavory practices. In 1911, federal regulators used Tarbell’s findings to break Standard Oil into 33 much smaller companies.

David had slayed Goliath. The U.S. government had set a monopoly-busting standard for future generations. John D. Rockefeller, Standard Oil’s owner, lost. The good guys won—or so it seemed.

In fact, Rockefeller saw what was coming and ended up profiting—massively—from the breakup of his company. Rockefeller made sure to retain significant stock holdings in each of Standard Oil’s 33 offspring and position them in different parts of the U.S. where they wouldn’t compete against one another.

Collectively, the 33 offspring went on to make Rockefeller very, very rich. Indeed, it was the breakup of Standard Oil that tripled his wealth and made him the wealthiest man in the world. In 1916, five years after Standard Oil was broken up, Rockefeller became the world’s first billionaire.

Say It Ain’t So, Dr. Seuss!

One of the offspring of Standard Oil was Esso (S-O, spelled out), which later launched one of the most successful advertising campaigns in history. It did so by relying on the talents of a young cartoonist who millions would later adore under his pen name, Dr. Seuss.

Decades before authoring the pro-environment parable The Lorax, Theodore Geisel helped Esso market “Flit,” a household spray gun that killed mosquitoes. What Americans weren’t told was that the pesticide DDT made up 5% of each blast of Flit.

When Esso put considerable creative resources behind the Flit campaign, they were looking years ahead to a time when they would also successfully market oil-based products. The campaign ran for 17 years in the 1940s and 1950s, at the time an unheard length of time for an ad campaign.

It taught Esso and other Standard Oil companies how to sell derivative products (like plastic and pesticides) that made the company and the brand a household name in the minds of the public. In its day, “Quick, Henry, the Flit!” was as ubiquitous as “Got Milk?” is today.

At the time, the public (and even many scientists) didn’t appreciate the deadly nature of DDT. That didn’t come until the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring. But accepting that DDT was deadly was hard, in part because of the genius of Geisel, whose wacky characters—strikingly similar to the figures who would later populate Dr. Seuss books—energetically extolled Flit’s alleged benefits.

Geisel later said the experience “taught me conciseness and how to marry pictures with words.” The Flit ad campaign was incredibly smart and clever marketing. It taught the industry how to sell a dangerous and unnecessary product as if it were something useful and even fun.

Years later, ExxonMobil would take that cleverness to new heights in its advertorials. They weren’t about clever characters. But they were awfully clever, containing few, if any, outright lies, but a whole lot of half-truths and misrepresentations.

It was clever enough to convince the New York Times to run them without labeling them as the advertisements that they, in fact, were. Their climate “advertorials” appeared in the op-ed page of the New York Times and were part of what scholars have called “the longest, regular (weekly) use of media to influence public and elite opinion in contemporary America.”

Controlling Climate Science

Big Oil also saw climate change coming. As abundant investigative reporting and academic studies have documented, the companies’ own scientists were telling their executives in the 1970s that burning more oil and other fossil fuels would overheat the planet. (Other scientists had been saying so since the 1960s.) The companies responded by lying about the danger of their products, blunting public awareness, and lobbying against government action. The result is today’s climate emergency.

Less well-known is how oil and gas companies didn’t just lie about their own research. They also mounted a stealth campaign to monitor and influence what the rest of the scientific community learned and said about climate change.

The companies embedded scientists in universities and made sure they were present at important conferences. They nominated them to be contributors to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body whose assessments from 1990 onward defined what the press, public, and policymakers thought was true about climate science.

While the IPCC reports, which rely on consensus science, were sound, Big Oil’s scientific participation gave them an insider’s view of the road ahead. More ominously, they introduced the art of questioning the consensus science in forums where every word is parsed.

The industry was employing a strategy pioneered by tobacco companies, but with a twist. Beginning in the 1950s, the tobacco industry cultivated a sotto voce network of scientists at scores of American universities and medical schools, whose work it funded.

Some of these scientists were actively engaged in research to discredit the idea that cigarette smoking was a health risk, but most of it was more subtle; the industry supported research on causes of cancer and heart disease other than tobacco, such as radon, asbestos, and diet. It was a form of misdirection, designed to deflect our attention away from the harms of tobacco and onto other things.

The scheme worked for a while, but when it was exposed in the 1990s, in part through lawsuits, the bad publicity largely killed it. What self-respecting scientist would take tobacco industry money after that?

The oil and gas industry learned from that mistake and decided that, instead of working surreptitiously, it would work in the open. And rather than work primarily with individual scientists whose work might be of use, it would seek to influence the direction of the scientific community as a whole. The industry’s internal scientists continued to do research and publish peer-reviewed articles, but the industry also openly funded university collaborations and other researchers.

From the late 1970s through the 1980s, Exxon was known both as a climate research pioneer, and as a generous patron of university science, supporting student research and fellowships at many major universities. Its scientists also worked alongside senior colleagues at NASA, the Department of Energy, and other key institutions, and funded breakfasts, luncheons, and other activities at scientific meetings. Those efforts had the net effect of creating goodwill and bonds of loyalty. It’s been effective.

The industry’s scientists may have been operating in good faith, but their work helped delay public recognition of the scientific consensus that climate change was unequivocally man-made, happening now, and very dangerous. The industry’s extensive presence in the field also gave it early access to cutting edge research it used to its advantage. Exxon, for example, designed oil platforms to accommodate more rapid sea level rise, even as the company publicly denied that climate change was occurring.

Don’t Call It Methane, It’s “Natural” Gas

Methane is an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, yet it has received far less attention. One reason is that the oil and gas industry has positioned methane— which marketing experts cleverly labeled “natural gas”—as the future of the energy economy. The industry promotes methane gas as a “clean” fuel that’s needed to bridge the transition from today’s carbon economy to tomorrow’s renewable energy era.

Some go further and see gas as a permanent part of the energy landscape: BP’s plan is renewables plus gas for the foreseeable future, and the company and other oil majors frequently invoke “low carbon” instead of “no carbon.”

Except that methane gas isn’t clean. It’s about 80 times more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide is.

As recently as a decade ago, many scientists and environmentalists viewed “natural gas” as a climate hero. The oil and gas industry’s ad guys encouraged this view by portraying gas as a coal killer. The American Petroleum Institute paid millions to run its first-ever Super Bowl ad in 2017, portraying gas as an engine of innovation that powers the American way of life.

Between 2008 and 2019, API spent more than $750 million on public relations, advertising, and communications (for both oil and gas interests), an analysis by the Climate Investigations Center found.

Today, most Americans view gas as clean, even though science shows that we can’t meet our climate goals without quickly transitioning away from it. The bottom line is that we can’t solve a problem caused by fossil fuels with more fossil fuels. But the industry has made a lot of us think otherwise.

There’s little chance the oil and gas industry can defeat renewable energy in the long term. Wind, solar, and geothermal, which are clean and cost-competitive, will eventually dominate energy markets. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, GridLab, and Energy Innovation have found that the U.S. can achieve 90% clean electricity by the year 2035 with no new gas and at no additional cost to consumers. But the oil and gas industry doesn’t need to win the fight in the long term.

It just needs to win right now so it can keep developing oil and gas fields that will be in use for decades to come. To do that, it just has to keep doing what it has done for the past 25 years: win today, fight again tomorrow.

A Spider’s Web of Pipelines

Here’s a final example of how the oil and gas industry plans for the next war even as its adversaries are still fighting the last one. Almost no one outside of a few law firms, trade groups, and congressional staff in Washington, DC, knows what the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is or does. But the oil and gas industry knows and it moved quickly after Donald Trump became president to lay the groundwork for decades of future fossil fuel dependency.

FERC has long been a rubber stamp for the oil and gas industry. The industry proposes gas pipelines, and FERC approves them. When FERC approves a pipeline, that approval grants the pipeline eminent domain, which in effect makes the pipeline all but impossible to stop.

Eminent domain gives a company the legal right to build a pipeline through landowners’ properties, and there is nothing they or state or county officials can do about it. A couple of states have successfully, though temporarily, blocked pipelines by invoking federal statutes such as the Clean Water Act. But if those state cases reach the current Supreme Court, the three justices Trump appointed—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney-Barrett—are almost certain to rule in the industry’s favor.

Oil and gas industry executives seized upon Trump’s arrival in the White House. In the opening days of his administration, independent researchers listened in on public trade gatherings of the executives, who talked about “flooding the zone” at FERC. The industry planned to submit not just one or two but nearly a dozen interstate gas pipeline requests. Plotted on a map, the projected pipelines covered so much of the U.S. that they resembled a spider’s web.

Once pipelines are in the system, companies can start to build them, and utility commissioners in every corner of America see this gas “infrastructure” as a fait accompli. And pipelines are built to last decades. In fact, if properly maintained, a pipeline can last forever in principle. This strategy could allow the oil and gas industry to lock in fossil fuel dependency for the rest of the century.

In hindsight, it’s clear that oil and gas industry leaders used outright climate denial when it suited their corporate and political interests throughout the 1990s. But now that outright denial is no longer credible, they’ve pivoted from denial to delay.

Industry PR and marketing efforts have shifted massive resources to a central message that, yes, climate change is real, but that the necessary changes will require more research and decades to implement, and above all, more fossil fuels. Climate delay is the new climate denial.

Nearly every major oil and gas company now claims that they accept the science and that they support sensible climate policies. But their actions speak louder than words. It’s clear that the future they want is one that still uses fossil fuels abundantly—regardless of what the science says. Whether it is selling deadly pesticides or deadly fossil fuels, they will do what it takes to keep their products on the market.

Now that we’re in a race to a clean energy future, it’s time to recognize that they simply can’t be trusted as partners in that race. We’ve been fooled too many times.

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11/12/2021

(AU Fact Check) Scott Morrison Says There Are Only Four Countries In The G20 With A Better Emissions Record Than Australia. Is That Correct?


Prime Minister Scott Morrison says Australia has reduced emissions by more than 20 per cent, a record he says is bettered by only four countries in the G20.(ABC News: Matt Roberts)


The claim

Under attack for the government's emissions policies after bruising appearances at the G20 in Rome and the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been keen to spruik Australia's achievements in the area.

In an interview with Sunrise on Channel Seven, Mr Morrison said that Australia has "reduced our emissions by more than 20 per cent".

"There are only four countries in the G20 that have actually done better than Australia on that front," he said.

Is Australia doing better on reducing emissions than all but four countries in the G20? RMIT ABC Fact Check investigates.

The verdict

Mr Morrison's claim is misleading.

Data from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change shows four G20 countries in front of Australia for emissions reductions on 2005 levels (Mr Morrison's chosen starting point) to 2019, including the land use, land-use change and forestry sector.

These parameters are the most advantageous to Australia when making international comparisons; excluding LULUCF or changing the starting year to 1990, when the data begins, puts Australia further behind the pack.

And this particular dataset, though authoritative, doesn't include nine nations of the G20 which were developing when the convention was signed. Other datasets that include these countries put between seven and nine G20 countries in front of Australia.

However, more problematic is the Prime Minister's use of a 2020 figure ("more than 20 per cent") for Australia in his comparison, when data is only available to 2019 for other countries.

The 2020 figure includes the effect of the pandemic, which experts told Fact Check contributed to a large drop in emissions world wide.

If a like-for-like comparison were able to be made using 2020 data for all countries, it is possible Australia would rank worse.

Most G20 nations have not yet released their figures for 2020 emissions. (ABC News: Michael Barnett)
Have emissions decreased by 20 per cent?

When asked about the 20 per cent figure, a spokesman for Mr Morrison directed Fact Check to the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory, published by the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources.

The department publishes quarterly updates of the inventory, dating back to 1990. The latest available when Mr Morrison made his claim was for March 2021.

Mr Morrison did not specify a starting point for the reduction he claimed. His spokesman nominated 2005.

That data showed that emissions in the year to March 2021 were 19.85 per cent lower than in the year to March 2005.

However, Mr Morrison made a comparison with G20 countries. Countries typically report their emissions on a calendar year basis.

Fact Check considers that in comparing countries it is necessary to standardise their reporting years, so will use December 2020, as the final figure.

In his claim, Mr Morrison said Australia's emissions were down by "more than 20 per cent".

The only way Fact Check could find a reduction of over 20 per cent using a calendar year was by calculating the difference between the quarterly December 2020 figure and the quarterly December 2005 figure, which yields a fall in emissions of 20.5 per cent.

The spokesman confirmed that this was the basis for Mr Morrison's calculation.

Experts contacted by Fact Check pointed to a range of problems with using quarterly figures.

Firstly, quarterly emissions figures are subject to some variation. Mark Howden, the director of the Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions at Australian National University, referred to this calculation as "cherrypicking".

"I think using quarterly figures is really problematic, because, you know, emissions go up and down the cost of the different quarters. And, and they do that differently for different sectors," he said.

"You can go into the NGGI and look at their annual numbers versus their quarterly numbers. And you can see the different trends there."

Secondly, 2020 encompasses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which had a profound effect on emissions world wide.

In Australia, for example, Victoria was in lockdown for much of the December quarter to which Mr Morrison refers.

Pep Canadell, chief research scientist at the CSIRO Climate Science Centre and the executive director of the Global Carbon Project, told Fact Check the sudden drop of around 5 per cent between 2019 and 2020 was the result of "a pandemic problem that has nothing to do with structural changes of energy, or economic system".

Put simply, government policy did not cause this large annual reduction.

The following graph shows this drop in emissions and compares reductions on 2005 levels using a rolling annual total of emissions (calculated by Fact Check), compared with quarterly emissions.


Apples and oranges

But perhaps the largest problem here is Mr Morrison's comparison of a 2020 figure for Australia, which includes the effects of the pandemic, with 2019 figures from other countries, which do not.

The Liberal Party has made this kind of comparison before. In a Facebook post on November 2, the party posted an infographic comparing Australian emissions to those of the US, Japan, New Zealand and Canada, as well asthe OECD average.

However, in the fine print, Australia's data is sourced from 2020, while all other countries are sourced from 2019. The OECD average is sourced from 2018.

Dr Canadell noted that emissions in 2020 for carbon dioxide only, not including other greenhouse gases which are reported to the UNFCCC, had declined by around 5.6 per cent in Australia, but around 10 per cent in the US, according to figures from the Global Carbon Project.

If 2020 figures were available for other countries, this could significantly change the standings amongst them.

Fact Check was unable to find any source with complete greenhouse gas emissions reporting for the year 2020 for any of the G20 countries other than Australia.

To be able to make fair comparisons among countries, Fact Check considers that the starting and finishing years for emissions reductions should be the same for every country.

The source of the claim
UNFCCC emissions data, though authoritative, does not allow comparisons between all G20 countries. (Pool via Reuters: Christopher Furlong)


Indeed, when Fact Check asked Mr Morrison's office for the source of his comparison with G20 countries, a spokesman responded with figures from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which has data from 1990 to 2019.

He provided the following percentage falls from 2005 to 2019:

  • The UK: -34 per cent

  • France: -19 per cent

  • Germany: -20 per cent

  • Italy: -32 per cent

  • Australia: -15 per cent

The spokesman acknowledged that this was the latest comparable data.

The UNFCCC is "the United Nations entity tasked with supporting the global response to the threat of climate change".

The convention is the parent treaty to the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, and maintains the registry for national determined contributions to greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

One-hundred-and-ninety-seven countries are parties to the convention, but not all of them report their greenhouse gas emissions to its secretariat every year or in the same way.

Annex I countries, comprised of members of the OECD in 1992 "plus countries with economies in transition (the EIT Parties), including Russia, the Baltic States, and several Central and Eastern European States," report their greenhouse gas emissions annually. This cohort includes Australia.

The latest year reported for these countries is 2019. Other countries do not need to report as frequently. 

Nine members of the G20 are not Annex I countries.

Thus, nearly half of the G20 has not provided figures to the UNFCCC to the year 2019.

The graph below shows the emissions reductions as a percentage of 2005 for all Annex I countries who are also members of the G20, including in the land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector.

Table: RMIT ABC Fact Check Source: UNFCCC Get the data

Indeed, the UK, France, Germany and Italy are the only single G20 countries ahead of Australia in this dataset.

The European Union (not shown on this graph), a member of the G20, whose emissions are composed in part by these four countries, is also ahead of Australia, with a reduction of 22.5 per cent.

Alison Reeve, the deputy director of the Grattan Institute's climate change and energy program, told Fact Check it would be better to compare individual countries in the G20 with Australia, rather than blocs of countries like the EU.

In making his claim, Mr Morrison referred to countries, not members, or blocs, of the G20.

As the four countries ahead of Australia in the UNFCCC data are EU countries (including the UK to 2019) Fact Check has decided to analyse them separately and omit the EU bloc from further analysis.

To LULUCF or not to LULUCF?
Land use, land-use change and forestry is an emissions sector reported to the UNFCCC. (Reuters: Ueslei Marcelino)
The UNFCCC recognises human activity through land use, land-use change and forestry as a carbon "sink", which can remove carbon from the atmosphere.

Planting trees through afforestation or reforestation, for example, stores carbon, removing it from the air.

However, whether it should be used in international comparisons is the subject of much debate.

Australia's Greenhouse Gas Inventory includes LULUCF.

Professor Howden said there are concerns about the accuracy of measuring emissions in this sector.

"They're clearly more difficult to measure than things like fuel usage where we know how many litres of petrol [are used]," he said.

"So it's a more difficult thing to quantify, [with] obviously, higher uncertainty levels."

Furthermore, the inclusion of LULUCF in international comparisons can advantage Australia over other countries where the sector is much smaller. Professor Howden cited a comparison between the island city-state of Singapore and the large Latin American nation of Brazil.

"My view is that if you're actually doing a fair comparison with other countries, those other countries that have very different land-use change elements sitting in inventory, so if you're comparing, for example, Singapore and Australia, clearly it's a bit of an apples with oranges sort of comparison.

"Whereas if you look at Brazil, presumably that's got a significant land-use change element."

Professor Howden added that most of the emissions reductions the government has been claiming in recent years are "actually due to policies reducing land-use change instigated during the Rudd-Gillard governments".

"Reductions in emissions stemming from those previous policies in my view should not be used to claim that current policy settings are effective."

Malte Meinshausen, an associate professor of climate science at the University of Melbourne's School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and a lead author of the IPCC's sixth assessment report, told Fact Check the "main time series" under the Kyoto Protocol excludes LULUCF, which he said "provides a better measure for actual energy, transport, building and industry emissions".

"Including LULUCF is always the way in which Australia looks good (and is not actually the standard international comparison)," he said.

Ms Reeve said: "Not every country includes LULUCF in the bases against which they measure their targets — so to make a good comparison between countries, it's useful to exclude it."

Indeed, when excluding LULUCF, other nations in the UNFCCC dataset compare much more favourably with Australia, which has increased emissions to 2019 on this basis by 4 per cent.

Choosing a starting year

Another factor which affects how a country's emissions reductions record might appear is the choice of starting year.

The year 2005, as chosen by Mr Morrison, is a year which advantages Australia.

Professor Howden noted that emissions that year were slightly under the peak of Australia's emissions.

Choosing a starting year of 1990, which is where the UNFCCC data begins, yields a different result.

"The best base year to use for international comparisons is 1990, as this is the year in which most countries start their emissions accounts," Ms Reeve said.

"However, any base year has its problems — there's an argument that 1990 provided an advantage for the EU and Russia because the collapse of heavy industry in the USSR and Eastern Bloc in the early ‘90s delivered an emissions dividend without any government policy."

Below, Fact Check has re-analysed the UNFCCC data using 1990 as a starting point.

Using 1990 as a starting year and including LULUCF adds a fifth country to the list of those with higher reductions than Australia — Russia.

Percentage change in emissions of UNFCCC Annex I countries
from 1990 to 2019 including LULUCF

Only G20 countries which are Annex I signatories are shown

Table: RMIT ABC Fact Check Source: UNFCCC Get the data

Excluding LULUCF, Australia has increased its emissions since 1990 by 28.7 per cent, which is only lower than Turkey.

Table: RMIT ABC Fact Check Source: UNFCCC Get the data

Australia, for example, has in the past assessed its progress against the year 2000 for the second Kyoto Protocol period.

And the recent agreement made in Glasgow references a global target of a 45 per cent reduction on 2010 levels by 2030.

These choices may make some countries look better or worse, but they mean very little for the climate.

Noting the somewhat arbitrary nature of these choices, Fact Check will continue assessing further data in this article using both 1990 and 2005 as starting points.

Data for other G20 countries
Brazil is a member of the G20, but it is not an Annex I signatory under the UNFCCC. (AP: Bruna Prado)
There are a range of reputable non-UNFCCC datasets which attempt to calculate the annual emissions of countries around the world, including all of those in the G20.

Experts contacted by Fact Check expressed a range of opinions on which should be used.

Professor Howden opined that any data source should use the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change methodologies.

Dr Canadell recommended the European Union's Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR).

EDGAR includes data for all greenhouse gases to 2018, including sporadic LULUCF data to 2015.

Ms Reeve preferred using data from the World Resources Institute's Climate Analysis Indicators Tool (CAIT).

CAIT uses non-UNFCCC data to maximise comparability between countries from organisations such as the International Energy Agency, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and the US Environmental Protection Agency. The data goes as far as 2018.

Associate Professor Meinshausen preferred data from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, (PIK) which Fact Check has cited previously.

The data uses UNFCCC data where available, and fills in the gaps with third-party data where it is not. The latest year in this dataset is 2019.

However, this data does not include emissions from LULUCF, citing the unreliable nature of estimating emissions in this sector, including high annual fluctuations.

To compare the data including LULUCF, Fact Check will use the CAIT data. For data excluding LULUCF, Potsdam Institute data will be used.

The CAIT figures

Data from CAIT including all G20 countries paints a different picture to data from the UNFCCC.

In this dataset, to 2018, Australia has increased emissions by 3.5 per cent on 2005 levels, behind the UK, Brazil, Italy, Canada, France, Germany, the US, Argentina and Japan, putting it around the middle of the pack.

Percentage change in emissions of G20 countries
from 2005 to 2018 including LULUCF

Table: RMIT ABC Fact Check Source: World Resources Institute Get the data

It's important to note that these figures for Annex I countries differ from those from the UNFCCC. However, they are the only figures Fact Check could find which include LULUCF and compare Annex I countries with non-Annex I countries.

On 1990 levels, Australia has increased emissions including LULUCF by 0.5 per cent, behind the UK, Russia, Germany, France, Italy, Brazil, Japan and the United States.

Percentage change in emissions of G20 countries
from 1990 to 2018 including LULUCF
Table: RMIT ABC Fact Check Source: World Resources Institute Get the data
The PIK figures

Taking LULUCF out of the equation, data from PIK changes the picture once again.

Australia's emissions increased by 4 per cent on 2005 levels, with the UK, Italy, France, Germany, Japan, the United States and Canada all recording decreases in emissions.

Percentage change in emissions of G20 countries
from 2005 to 2019 excluding LULUCF
Table: RMIT ABC Fact Check Source: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Get the data

On 1990 levels, Australia's emissions increased by 28.4 per cent, with all of the same countries mentioned above ahead, plus Russia.

Percentage change in emissions of G20 countries
from 1990 to 2019 excluding LULUCF
Table: RMIT ABC Fact Check Source: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Get the data

The big picture

Of all these datasets, the one selected by Mr Morrison is most favourable to Australia for international comparisons.

It's important to note that this is not new in international comparisons. When making commitments to reduce emissions, for example, countries select their own starting year, which can advantage their own situation.

And not all countries are able to take advantage of LULUCF to reduce their emissions as Australia can, something that Dr Canadell referred to as "low-hanging fruit".

Ms Reeve said international comparisons "matter amongst like countries, because it tells us if any one country is trying to free ride".

But she said it is important that the profiles of countries being compared are similar.

"Comparing amongst G20 or OECD countries is less useful, because member countries have very different economic bases (so Australia/Canada are resource-intensive economies, South Korea/Japan are not, but all are members of the G20)."

Ultimately, however, what matters to the climate is not which country's record is better, but whether what countries are doing is enough to limit global warming in accordance with the Paris Agreement.

"It matters more whether actions are consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement – one country doing more than another is irrelevant if both are doing less than required – you might be able to run faster than me but neither of us are close to qualifying for the Olympics!" she said.

Principal researcher: Online Editor Matt Martino

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