It was entirely appropriate that Scott Morrison was on mute when he began his address to Joe Biden’s climate summit overnight. He had nothing to say or offer, and although Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said “Mr Prime Minister I’m not sure we’re hearing you,” the message Morrison was sending the world was clear enough. Morrison may as well just have stuck his middle finger up at the camera.
Australia’s already woefully inadequate 26-28% emissions reduction target from 2005 levels by 2030 — set by arch-climate denialist Tony Abbott — now looks irrelevant at best and misleading at worst, regardless of how often Morrison and his ministers say that we will “meet and beat it”.
The United States is committed to reductions of 50-52% compared with 2005. The UK is committed to a 78% cut on 1990 levels by 2035. Canada — a resource economy very similar to Australia’s — is committed to 40-45% of 2005 levels by 2030. Norway’s is 50-55% by 2030. Japan is committed to 46% from 2013 levels by 2030. South Korea lifted its target to a 24.4% reduction on 2017 levels by 2030. And the European Union this week ratified its commitment to a 55% cut by 2030.
So Australia’s target is now half of the developed world consensus. And that consensus illustrates how irrelevant and distracting the Canberra press gallery’s obsession with a 2050 target is.
The climate battle is not over the next thirty years, it’s over the next ten. It’s here now, not off in ten political cycles. Political journalists convinced Morrison is slowly moving to a 2050 target are in a fossil fuel fantasy land where an urgent climate crisis can be ignored until our kids and grandkids deal with it.
Our lack of a meaningful target is one thing, but the Morrison government continues to invest in gas and coal-fired power, approve coal mines and invest in discredited fossil fuel industry scams like carbon capture and storage. We are, along with the likes of Saudia Arabia and Russia, one of the world’s climate criminals.
Meanwhile, the European Union is putting the pieces together for its proposed Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) that will target imports from climate criminal states like Australia. The proposal emerged from the European Commission’s Green New Deal policy in December 2019, with the EC saying it would, after consultations were completed, develop it as a legislative proposal for this year.
The European Parliament’s environment committee then took up the issue and prepared a paper “Towards a WTO-compatible EU carbon border adjustment mechanism”. That was adopted by the EU parliament in March. The CBAM is the first on the European Commission’s legislative to-do list for 2021, as part of its preparations for meeting the EU’s 55% target.
That’s despite the Biden administration urging the Europeans to back away from a CBAM and to leave it as a “last resort”. External critics who complain about the CBAM don’t understand, or ignore, the basic political reality facing EU governments: none of them are prepared to lose jobs as a result of competitor countries having lower climate action targets than Europe. No one wants to go through what Emmanuel Macron went through with the gilets jaunes movement which, before it was hijacked by anti-Semites and extremists, began as a protest against higher fuel taxes.
Australia’s €8 billion in exports to the EU will thus likely be subject a mechanism intended to ensure European workers don’t pay the price from Australia’s reckless indifference to climate change. It will likely involve the imposition of the EU’s existing carbon price on imports based on their emissions intensity.
The EU carbon price this week reached €45 a tonne; that will increase significantly in coming years to address the more ambitious 55% target. Before this week’s record high, the price was already forecast to increase to nearly €90 a tonne over the next nine years.
It’s an apt demonstration of the reality that faces Australia, whatever delusions the Morrison government and its media stenographers might try to convince us of.
What I’m wondering through all this is where is Angus Taylor? And what does he have over everyone else that no one in the media, opposition or the saner elements of the government is calling out his complete lack of policy, accountability or presence?
What does he have over everyone else….. Good question. He can make water disappear. Australia’s strategic fuel dump too, missing somewhere in the USA.
Climate change science- also disappeared from Australia’s parliament. Taylor is a magician. He makes things disappear. Things we need. Water, a fuel supply IN Australia & any action to prevent the looming climate disaster. All disappeared. The only thing he manages to make appear is the millions flowing into HIS bank accounts.
Well here’s hoping that Labor can find its balls at the next election and put forward a much more ambitious reduction target (40% plus by 2030). Here’s also hoping that the electorate can see past SloMo’s glib three word advertising slogans and realize he is leading us toward global pariah status.
Not looking to promising to get anything from Labor on climate policy, they didn´t even bother to turn up to Q&A last night.
Thank god Sarah Hanson-Young was there to take up the fight.
That’s right, and yet the time for Albo to make a bold 2030 statement is right now, this very day, while Morrison’s shifty-eyed shame is in the world spotlight. Lost in a news void and struggling for political air, Albo should strike with an ambitious, press-gallery-jarring 40%, as Munkey suggests. But he won’t.
Surely 40%+ with – heaven forbid! – some bold detail on how they plan to get us there. The bloke’s got to contrast himself with the bullshitter in chief rather than trying to blend into the shadows and occasionally emerge to ambush that grub in the big chair.
As noted by the host, 4 Labor frontbenchers were asked to appear.
All declined.
Why does anyone still think that they are electable?
Apart from everything else how does Labour leadership think turning down such invitation looks? Given the import of “optics” these days?
Hiding beneath the doona of wedgie fear.
Small target, me-tooism – they incapable of providing an alternative.
Perhaps too comfy in opposition and just not interested in doing anything differently?
How about “hoping that Labor can find it’s balls before the next election”, and start making ground now?
Our “daggy dad” and his sporting similes are escaping downhill “at a canter”. Weren’t we going to meet our “targets” on climate “at a canter”? Like the vaccine rollout etc.
I thought Morrison’s Hillsong was leading Australia ….. but it turns out to be the Amish congregation.
I am really proud to be an inner city latte sipping Australian who is looking forward to the day that I can buy one of the new EVs currently on sale in Europe.
I think the Amish would be a carbon neutral economy, or damn close to it, so no, it’s not an Amish congregation.
I think you will find that Abbott ….. whose policies Morrison is using ….. never got anything right and heading down the ultra conservative path is a continuation of driving Australia into the horse & buggy days while continuing to export massives amounts of coal will see the death of the Great Barrier Reef and making Australia the pariah of the Pacific.
So yes ….. the Amish example stands.
China will increasingly refuse to buy our stuff for any number of reasons to which they will now add harming their climate. The EU has already framed a carbon levy, for application in 2023, on imports from countries not matching or exceeding EU carbon reduction performance. The US and the UK have both politely identified Australia as their embarrassing climate change “unhinged uncle” from the southern oceans at family gatherings. At international forums Australia is now regarded as an under performer and a “disabler” not an “enabler” on any number of issues.
Morrison states future generations of Australians, living and working in an increasingly connected and interdependent world will thank him and his government for their vision, their perspicacity, their fortitude in resisting reality and for freeloading on the backs of others who have done the hard yards but are so intellectually inferior they are unable to understand they have been hoodwinked by the master magician.
Morrison, although born in the late 1960’s, is not even a product of his time. He is a throwback to the 1930’s, interfacing three parallel universes – his personal values system, knowledge base, and understanding of human and and international relations from the 1930’s, his personal operating mode scrambled with 1980’s manipulative bandwagon advertising techniques and the present, a place he profoundly misunderstands and is unable to come to terms with.
Insightful, Rod. Like Howard who harked back to the days of white picket fences, and Tony Abbott’s strange love in with the monarchy and church authoritarianism, Morrison is similarly caught between times, none of them being the one he was born in.
It’s worrying to realise we are being led by someone who is unable to comprehend the reality of today’s world (or who refuses to acknowledge it), like so many of the COALition party. I have to admire Joe Biden at 78 who is well up to date and who is unafraid to be seen as a leader. If only the COALition…………….
The perverse freeloading con that Howard kicked off on Kyoto has finally been rumbled. Reaping time, all. Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie!
“it didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen”. Sadly and humiliatingly in front of the world.
My niece in Ireland has been part of an international project on climate emissions reduction. I wasn’t surprised to to receive a tearful emoji after our fearful leader’s first appearance on Zoom. She has yet to comment on his 2nd.