The most important climate science update for almost a decade shows we still have a narrow path to avoiding full-blown climate catastrophe — but it requires every country to give its absolute all.
In the face of today’s science, Australia’s extraordinarily inadequate commitments look like a wilful act of harm against future generations, and a catastrophic failure of leadership. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be this way.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) landmark assessment comes just 82 days out from the most critical round of international climate negotiations for many years, and in a year that has seen Australia slip even further behind the rest of the world.
It comes against a backdrop of unprecedented heat, fires and floods in the northern hemisphere and scenes that are eerily familiar to Australians after our devastating 2019-20 summer. It shows that the scale and pace at which humans are altering the climate system has no precedent.
Climate change is already wreaking havoc around the world with worse to come; truly catastrophic turns of events this century — such as the sudden collapse of ice sheets or the shutdown of ocean currents that shape our weather — cannot be ruled out. It shows that Australia, through increases in fire weather, deadly heatwaves and damage to critical ecosystems, is particularly vulnerable. For the Pacific, which has contributed almost nothing to the causes of climate change, the stakes are even higher.
The message is simple. The pace of emissions reductions over the coming decade will be the difference between a liveable future for today’s young people and a future that is incompatible with well-functioning human societies.
When Australia put forward a 2030 emissions reduction target six years ago (26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2030) it was already among the weakest of all developed countries. Meeting it would see us retain our status as one of the most polluting countries on earth. Astonishingly, the Morrison government has remained stubbornly wedded to that target while almost every other advanced economy has substantially strengthened theirs.
Pressure on Australia to strengthen its 2030 target has been building for months, including from our most ardent allies, the US and UK. As we count down the days to COP26 in Glasgow, the IPCC report is sure to pile on further pressure.
Make no mistake: if all countries were to follow Australia’s recalcitrance, humanity would be heading into a barely survivable future. Based on the latest science and taking into account Australia’s national circumstances, the Climate Council recommends we should reduce our emissions by 75% below 2005 by 2030.
The report also carries a pertinent message about the lunacy of our “gas-fired recovery”. As well as being a key factor behind Australia’s abject failure thus far to substantially reduce carbon dioxide emissions, our gas industry has also contributed to a recent rise in the concentration of methane in the atmosphere.
The report makes clear that methane is a powerful and dangerous greenhouse gas, and that limiting future warming depends on deep, rapid and sustained reductions in its emissions. Put simply, there can be no new gas developments and we must transition away from this fossil fuel as quickly as possible.
Unlike some of our peers, Australia is blessed with almost unrivalled potential for renewable energy, giving us everything we need to prosper as the world moves beyond fossil fuels.
While no developed country has more to lose from runaway climate change, none has better potential to help build the clean economies of the future. The science is unequivocal: every choice, every year, and every fraction of a degree of avoided warming matters. This may be our final warning.
Dr Simon Bradshaw is the head of research at the Climate Council.
Is the Morrison government doing enough about global warming? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name if you would like to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say column. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Morrison and the LNP are dreaming if they think they can continue doing what they’re doing, in the face of the rest of the world.
Australia won’t just be on the receiving end of tariffs and cold shoulders at international events. Australia will be despised.
Every time there’s a catastrophic flood in Germany, heatwaves in Canada, massive fires in Greece ….eyes will turn to us Aussies, digging up that coal and shipping it off and taking the cash, defiantly selling everyone else’s future down the river for its own greedy gain.
That ain’t gonna fly.
Even if we could bear the ire of that many billions loathing us – which I don’t think we can – the rest of the world would ultimately make us stop, in whatever way was needed.
Morrison and the LNP and the fossil fuel industries are headed for extinction – their own hopefully, rather than everyone else’s.
Loving our coal, and paying big buck$ for it, is an odd way to show loathing.
We might still get a good price for our filthy coal from India, Indonesia, Nigeria etc but it’s not going to stop the nations with economic and political clout from shredding us.
It’s fabulous to see history being made! Like being on the deck of the Titanic, or ground zero at Hiroshima when the sh*t hit the fan. Factory default on planet Earth is no ice, so we have 70 metres of sea level rise to come as well as everything else. How exciting! How unsurprising! So throw away your screens everyone, roll up your sleeves and prepare for calloused hands, offal banquets and lots of walking. Oh, and I suggest we eat the politicians first. Even if it makes us sick.
I also get that ‘morbid fascination’ of being around to witness the beginning of the end. Who knows how much I will see but I’m damned sure my 20 year old kids will know all about it. Just about every age has had its version of apocalyptic forecasts, always too soon. Imagine being alive at the time the scientists are telling us we’re up the proverbial creek.
There was a movie some time ago, a meteor headed for earth and the world taking action to blow it up before it hit. We are in exactly that situation but because climate change is more abstract than a meteor we are left with boundless uselessness, unimpeded impotence.
I can’t see how we get out of this one but I really don’t think that is an excuse for inaction.
As appealing as it is, you can’t just blame Scott Morrison and Angus Taylor with the consequences of the lost decade. The great Australian public abandoned the development of an effective carbon strategy by giving greater priority to negative gearing and franking credits in 2019 election despite the warnings from climate scientists.
More to the point, in 2013 they voted the ‘Axe the Tax’ – which wasn’t, as admitted by the Kredlinator.
We will do SFA. In ten years time we’ll still be blaming everyone else and waiting for someone to go first.
By then, virtually every other country of significance will have gone before us.
In a triumph of hope over experience, I would like to think we will have a much more competent and forward-thinking government by then.
My only quibble, it doesn’t “look like” wilful harm to future generations, that is what it is. It’s the same lack of ethics, unbridled selfishness that says, keep the economy open and damn the deaths. It doesn’t even make medium term sense but that’s the irrationality baked into the system.