The issue
We are heading towards a climate catastrophe. Unless we stop emissions rising by 2025, a 1.5-degree temperature rise is unavoidable. Neither major party has the policy to achieve this.
Why is it an issue?
Labor and the Coalition are trying to “end the climate wars” which have been so politically toxic and led to a stagnant approach to emissions reduction over the past decade.
What the parties are offering
After months of wrangling with the Nationals, and at the cost of billions in regional boondoggles (some of which will boost emissions), late last year Scott Morrison’s government committed Australia to net zero emissions by 2050.
But before the deal was reached, the government avoided any change to the medium-term emissions reduction target of 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2030. The Morrison plan to reduce emissions is, to quote his team line, through “technology not taxes”. It’s also very heavy on spin over substance.
It aims to reach the target through existing technologies in its roadmap — solar, wind, clean hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (which probably doesn’t work). But that will get Australia only 85% of the way to net zero; the other 15% relies on technologies which haven’t been invented.
Labor leader Anthony Albanese is promising a 43% reduction in emissions by 2030, a whole 2% less ambitious than the plan his predecessor Bill Shorten took to voters in 2019. It came with a forecast for renewables to make up 82% of electricity by 2030, and EVs to dominate the new car market.
But in an election to be fought over cost of living, and both leaders’ vibes, there’s little focus on the greatest existential challenge facing humanity. Morrison made no mention of climate or net zero in his press conference launching the election campaign. Albanese spent a bit more on his plan to turn Australia into a “renewable energy superpower” with cheaper electricity and more jobs.
Discussion
Another telling remark Albanese has returned to a few times over the past week is his promise to “end the climate wars”.
Sometimes we get so caught up in the day to day it’s easy to forget just how much of the instability that has afflicted Australian politics over the past decade is linked back to climate and the transition from fossil fuels.
Climate effectively ended Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership twice. It’s the reason Barnaby Joyce returned from the dead to lead the Nationals — promising to fight net zero. And it’s a particularly painful issue for Labor. The party has to walk a tightrope between a shrinking, blue-collar support base who’ve lived off the fossil fuel industry for generations, and the desperate need to abandon coal in a heating world.
In 2019, perceptions that Labor’s climate policy would destroy the mining sector contributed to its electoral failure across central and north Queensland. Before the 2013 election, Tony Abbott very effectively convinced voters Labor’s carbon tax, arguably the most successful piece of emissions reduction legislation we’ve had, would destroy livelihoods.
It’s that political reality that explains Labor’s commitment to support new coal mines, in lockstep with the Coalition
The debate around climate has evolved in 2022 in the sense that the Coalition is on board with net zero, and won’t be making absurd statements about electric vehicles “ending the weekend”.
But the main impulse for that shift has been solving a political problem, not lowering emissions.
We have the capability to power the entire world, if we put our mind and money where our Government’s denial has been.
I am so tired of the pussyfooting around the issue, has everyone got amnesia? Black Summer except it started in August when a remnant of Gondwanaland burned for the first time ever,
We have huge areas of marginal if not completely useless land which could be put under solar panels, with the energy generated to manufacture Ammonia using water from the Artesia and sub-Artesian basin. If we are using the Artesian basin there is pilot thermo power plant in Birdsville maybe we can get more of them using the heat of the Artesian basin..
We can set up Hydrogen hubs near places like Townsville, Darwin to use the energy to refine rare earths to manufacture batteries that the world needs and the ports and water needed to export.
Off Derby in WA there are huge tide runs which can be harnessed for power, no nothing futuristic about that, they built them into the Lock systems in St Malo in the 70’s and yes, they still work.There is lots of water and a port facility for export.
Using the hydrogen contained in the ammonia (NH3) which can be safely trucked anywhere, because it is not explosive whereas Hydrogen is. The trucks with an engine powered by Ammonia and producing Nitrogen molecules as a residue.
This is what they call “Green Hydrogen” by any other name. We can burn it instead of coal and gas.
We have boundless markets for Green Hydrogen, the Japanese have told us they will buy as much as we can produce.
How many more years do we have to waste like the last decade? By current scientific projects about 3 years.
There may come a time in the not so distance future when anyone who has accepted help from a Petro- Chemical company will not be welcome in Australia.
I’m not religious, but what that expression? “from your mouth to God’s ears”?
It’s strange, isn’t it? Almost inexplicable. If the Liberals lose this election, their intransigence with respect to climate change will almost certainly be a big contributing factor, and yet the message is about as clear as it can be that the great majority of Australians want meaningful climate action. Meaningful, not the tripe that Morrison and co have been peddling so far.
They might be lacking when it comes to ethics and moral integrity, but they’re not completely stupid. They must be aware of the temperature of this issue within the electorate. In addition, one of the biggest new threats to their return to power compared to 2019 is the rise of the teal independents, and that rise has been driven largely by Liberal climate denialism.
Sure, Labor can be criticised for not coming out more strongly on the climate policy stuff, but given what happened to them in 2019, they can hardly be blamed for their small target strategy. This strategy seems to be working: the Murdoch press seems to be finding them a much more difficult target to hit this time around.
At the risk of stating the obvious, 2022 isn’t 2019. Since 2019, as well as the rise of the teals, we’ve survived one of the worst fire seasons in living memory, and some of the worst flooding. Plus a global pandemic that might possibly linked to climate change, and the Liberals pushing Australia further into international climate pariah status through their failures at COP26.
I know that the Libs are owned by the fossil fuel industry, but I’m sure that what Morrison, Dutton and the rest of them value above all else is power. That power is, I think, at considerably greater risk today than it was three years ago.
I don’t understand their actions, and I find that disquieting.
Yes it IS disquieting. I hardly dare to raise this question, because it’s almost verboten. Is it my imagination or are there a whole heap of religious people senior liberal politicians these days – I mean a LOT more than usual? I’ve often wondered if Scottie thinks he’s going to heaven so all is well in his world, that he doesn’t need to worry about anything else. It’s not what I would call a theory, more a “Far out, that couldn’t be it, could it?”
Thank you, Kishor. Who is paying both parties more than $600,000? Which staff are “hopping” from Parliament House to the Minerals Council and back? (I have not had time to read your whole article – that is for later when the sun sets! You might have mentioned these!)
Labor are cowards over this issue. Man up and take on the sceptics Albo. Punters want to back in climate change that these nincompoops have been denying for 20 years.
Just Do It ✔️
Albo? That is to fun.
There is no denying the political reality of the distribution of climate change deniers, miners wedded to their mining jobs and “townies” whose livelihood relies on mining (or that’s how they see it anyway). Labor lost as a result of this reality last time and not that much has changed in those electorates. So how about you lay off Labor? The task must be done in a nuanced way or Labor will lose again. If the “punters” who acknowledge the existential threat of climate change (and I’m one of them) were evenly spread, Labor could come out more strongly. They are not and therein lies the problem. Anger towards Labor trying to pull of the most difficult of jobs is surely the most displaced anger in the whole debate.
Labour is scared stiff of losing an election to an unelectable prime minister. I’ve never seen such timidity in politics. I’d like to get hold of them personally and shake the sh.. out of them! Let’s hope Labor’s coal promise is the last of the broken election promises EVER. Because I for one am yelling “NOT ACCEPTABLE!” for them to w..k on while we burn.