We know Tony Abbott knows how to respond quickly to a crisis – at least to one of his choosing, or even one of his creation.
On national security, Abbott has been quick to mobilise forces, at home and abroad, to deal with the abhorrent threat of ISIS. On the budget crisis, confected or otherwise, Abbott has demonstrated a penchant for taking drastic and unpopular measures.
But don’t expect to see Abbott spring into action when it comes to climate change, unless it’s about undoing the hard-won achievements of those that have gone beforehand.
In the past few weeks, the warnings of a potential climate crisis have come thick and fast: we are at the highest level of emissions ever; our carbon budget is diminishing; 2014 is shaping up to be the hottest on record, and more heat is being stored in the oceans; billions of dollars of infrastructure is threatened by rising seas.
The implications go on: the coal industry is in terminal decline, the world’s leading funds managers want a carbon price and more policy ambition to match the political rhetoric, new economic analysis insists it is vastly cheaper to do something, than to do nothing.
Meanwhile, in New York, a summit of 140 international government leaders, and a week long campaign for action has been prefaced by an extraordinary march of more than 300,000 people demand rapid and meaningful action on climate change, and hundreds of thousands more elsewhere, including 30,000 in Melbourne.
The US president Barack Obama is attending, and is expected to lay out its vision for an agreement in Paris next year. China’s head of government is not attending, but his climate change envoy is nevertheless likely to spell out China’s ambitions, which given its move away from coal will be more ambitious than anyone might have expected a year or two ago. The EU is likely to foreshadow increased targets.
Australia will not be represented by Abbott, who will be in New York a day later but says he couldn’t make it any earlier. Instead, Australia will be represnted by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, whose department now has control of Australia’s climate change negotiations, having yanked it away from the environment department which absorbed most of the now closed climate change ministry.
It doesn’t really matter who attends, it is the message that counts. Bishop was quoted by the AFR over the weekend as saying Australia would not be making any post 2020 commitments, and certainly not any higher pre-2020 commitments. Instead, she would outline the Abbott government’s plans for its $2.5 billion emissions reduction fund.
The audience will be polite, but privately the question will once again be “WTF is going on Down Under”. To most, it will confirm the transition of Australia from an influential and positive contributor to the talks, to one of a handful of countries that amount to stone throwers at the back of the room – along with Canada, Russia and a few other recalcitrants.
The country that delivered the world’s first carbon trading scheme (in NSW), and the first tradable renewable energy target, is now the first to bring a carbon price to an end, and appears determined to the first to reduce the scope of a renewables target, if not end it completely.
The US submission, according to Carbon Brief, will call for every country to outline:
- the timeframe for emissions cuts,
- the year cuts will be measured against, known as the base year,
- the sectors and greenhouse gases included in the pledge,
- the level of cuts as a percentage,
- details on how it will measure the reductions,
- what policies it already has in place to help cut emissions.
The Climate Institute says Australia has already supported an agreement to share an indicative national commitment to post 2020 goals well in advance of the Paris climate negotiations at the end of 2015, but is yet to provide any details.
“Now is the time for Australia to come clean on its commitments,” CEO John Connor says.Will the Government going to be fair dinkum about these climate negotiations, or will they be playing poker with the planet’s wellbeing?”
“It is also time for Australia to make clear it is serious about the internationally agreed goal of avoiding 2°C warming. This means we need to reduce emissions by around 60 per cent below 2000 levels by 2030 and make the Australian economy carbon neutral, or de-carbonised, by 2050.” This was exactly the position adopted by Greens leader Christine Milne last week.
“Decarbonisation is an imperative if Australia is to avoid the economic and human costs of climate change. It should be a more explicit part of policy setting from international commitments to domestic policy, such as energy. This is very good reason not to backslide on the Renewable Energy Target, for instance.”
The number 2 has suddenly become a very important number: 2°C is the globally agreed limit set by 194 governments (including Australia.) But the Abbott government, and Joe Hockey in particular, is fixated on another number 2 – as in percentage for global annual economic growth.
The G20 has been trumpeting Hockey’s target and the 900-point plan offered to reach it. Nowhere is there mention of an unheralded document prepared for the G20 finance and leaders meeting, one that calls for carbon pricing – of the type dumped by the Abbott government – to be a central plank of climate policies.
Little wonder that Abbott doesn’t want climate change mentioned at the G20 – a decision that has horrified and frustrated US and European p[olicy makers and advisors.
The report from the G20 Climate Finance Study Group makes uncomfortable reading for the Australian government.
The group was established by G20 finance ministers in April 2012 to better understand the economic implications and opportunities from action on climate change and to mobilise “climate finance”. Chief among its findings are the “implementation of emissions trading systems (ETS)” and the “development of domestic emissions/carbon taxes”. It also says member countries should “Rationalize and phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption”, and implement efficiency standards.
It is not clear if the report even got to be considered by the finance ministers meeting in Cairns, directed as they were to focus on 2% growth, rather than limiting warming to 2°C.
But as the TCI’s Connor noted, the UN Climate Summit is also being addressed by leaders from business who recognise that fair, high-quality growth can no longer be sustained unless climate risk is addressed, and who see the opportunities in doing so.
“The Government is rightly concerned about future financial debts but these include climate debts that will grow with inaction and debts from lost opportunities as countries, companies and investors turn to cleaner, more sustainable, economic prosperity,” he said.
