The timing couldn’t have been better. In the same week as Western Australian Greens MP Brad Pettitt announces he will introduce a 2030 climate action bill into the WA Parliament this week, the Business Council of Australia (BCA) says it supports a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030.
Even the WA Nationals have come on board and adopted a policy of net zero emissions by 2050 — a rather more conservative target than the BCA’s but one that nonetheless radically differentiates them from their federal colleagues.
Although the BCA might have upstaged Pettitt’s announcement, he sees it as adding gravitas to the bill.
“This is a very significant announcement by the Business Council,” Pettitt told Crikey. “It marks an important shift in understanding about climate change — from economic cost to economic opportunity. But this economic opportunity will be largely enjoyed by those who move early.
“Australia — but especially sun-, wind-, land- and lithium-rich Western Australia — is extremely well placed to benefit from the extraordinary low-carbon transition that is finally under way in earnest.”
But Pettitt says WA lacks the political leadership to benefit from the opportunities this low carbon transition presents.
“WA is the only state with rising emissions and the only state without an emissions or renewable energy target,” he said. “The volume of WA’s gas industry means that there is no pathway for Australia to meet the Paris agreements without WA doing its bit.
“That’s why I’ve introduced this climate bill — to speed up WA’s ambition and for the state to make the most of the opportunities the low-carbon transition presents.”
Pettitt has been advised by a climate expert advisory group on the bill. He says it is pragmatic, science-based, and completely achievable for WA’s mining and resources economy. It will:
- Legislate an interim emissions reduction target of 50% by 2030 to speed up the transition to net zero
- Legislate renewable energy generation targets of 50% by 2025 and 90% by 2030
- Establish an independent climate expert panel to advise the minister on climate and renewable energy policies.
Pettitt says it is clear climate change momentum is building, and it is imperative the WA government takes the legislative steps to provide the necessary leadership.
The WA Nationals support for net zero by 2050 was significant, as it showed them to be more progressive and evidence-based than their federal counterparts, he said.
“Sadly, the federal Nats are increasingly at odds with both the science and where climate policy is inevitably heading both globally and around the country,” he said. “As a result they are also risking Australia losing the economic opportunities that come with climate.”
Good work Brad Pettit! 🙂
Your last para Laurence, locks in our dilemma. At same time it may broaden options. Younger generations stand to be most afflicted. Is it time to once again acknowledge youth and, lower voting age to sixteen, seventeen? They are sidelined, even derided, for expressing their concerns. Yet they ultimately, will determine outcomes. Policy, economics. Life on, of, all future human adaptability. Surely we need ‘yesterday’, an urgent political leadership revival?
The main support for the Nationals comes from the farming communities, who are more aware than anyone that climate change is upon us. However they are not going to give up fossil fuels easily. Currently, at harvest time, previously idle machinery now suddenly works flat out from dawn till dusk. Trucks work almost continuously all day. Farmers and their supporting economy runs hot. The power for this machinery is diesel that has been stockpiled in preparation for the harvest, a trick that cannot be achieved by electrification. Farming communities need to know they will continue to have hydrocarbon fuel for their internal combustion engines. Yet few crusaders are promising them synthetic fuel on the scale they need. Until we address that concern we must expect that rural voters will be hostile to total decarbonisation. Let’s remember that total decarbonisation is required in the Bush too, not yet one more exemption.
Could part of the solution to bush resistance be, not ideological, but prosaic as fuel storage? It’s a bloody good point. Thanks for making it.
Roger
You are right to point out that parts of the agricultural sector are going to be harder to decarbonise. The “electrification of everything” in undoubtedly easier to achieve in cities. But that said there is an opportunity to make farming and farming equipment more energy efficient.
I would also add that we are talking about net-zero not no use of fossil fuels and the regions are where the opportunity is to create carbons sinks to offset the carbon emissions we cannot avoid.
thanks
Brad Pettitt
Synthetic fuel made from recycled atmospheric carbon dioxide and nonfossil electricity is inherently “net zero”. An agricultural sector completely supplied with synthetic fuel would not need special exemptions when the entire country must go to zero. Yes, regional Australia can be “net zero” fossil emissions. However any “negative emissions” scheme – that purports to permanently bury fossil carbon – requires the sceptical scrutiny of the Greens.