This was published 3 years ago
Australia on track to break Paris carbon emission commitments
Australia must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2045 if it is to do its part to keep warming to less than 2 degrees, an expert panel has found.
The 2-degree figure is the upper limit of the Paris Agreement signed by the government in 2016. To reach the more ambitious goal of 1.5 degrees set by the agreement, the nation must reduce emissions by 74 per cent by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by 2035, according to an analysis by the newly created Climate Targets Panel. The panel includes leading Australian climate scientists such as professors Will Steffen, Lesley Hughes and Malte Meinshausen, as well as former Liberal leader John Hewson.
Operations at the Carmichael Coal Mine, Queensland, last year.Credit: Cameron Laird
The Australian government has committed to reducing emissions by 26 to 28 per cent by 2030 from a 2005 base, which Professor Steffen says is inadequate to meet the Paris goals. It is also far short of the recommendation by the Climate Change Authority in 2014, which said the government should cut emissions by 45 to 65 per cent by 2030.
Due to a failure over recent years to drive emissions down, Australia must now make deeper cuts each year to make a reasonable contribution to Paris targets, said Professor Hughes, pro-vice-chancellor at Macquarie University.
The panel used the same methodology as the government’s own Climate Change Authority’s 2014 analysis and updated it to account for greenhouse pollution emitted since then.
The model takes into account Australia’s population and its per-capita greenhouse gas emissions – making allowances for historically high emissions levels – and calculates what would keep us on track for the Paris targets.
US President Joe Biden is expected to hold a climate conference in the first 100 days of his term to urge nations to commit to more ambitious climate change action before UN climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland in November.
So far Britain, the European Union, Japan and South Korea have committed to reaching net-zero by 2050, and China has set a 2060 target. President Biden is expected to announce a 2050 target, while Australia has committed only to reaching net-zero sometime in the second half of the century.
The panel’s findings come as the Climate Council estimated the cost of extreme weather events had doubled since the 1970s and over the past decade has reached $35 billion.
The report predicts that by 2038 extreme weather will cost the Australian economy about $100 billion a year.
“Globally, the 2010s was by far the costliest decade on record for extreme weather catastrophes,” the report said.
“Australia has faced relatively heavy costs relative to other countries.
“On a per-capita basis, economic damages from extreme weather disasters in Australia were around seven times the global average.”