The critical question facing the Morrison government is different but no less potent: given growing international, corporate, financial and domestic support for zero net emissions by 2050, how will it reject this target yet win the extra credibility on climate change action that it needs?
Anthony Albanese and Scott Morrison both confront profound political dilemmas in the coming contest over climate change. The Opposition Leader’s is the classic trap: he has pledged himself to a “transformational” stance — to quote the UN — but the risk is he fails to be transformational and merely promotes a hoax, or he is honest and frightens an Australia little interested in seeing its society transformed.
The UN Emissions Gap Report for 2019 says: “Although the number of countries announcing zero net greenhouse gas emission targets for 2050 is increasing, only a few countries have so far formally submitted long-term strategies to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.” Here is the story: politics drives the easy option of signing up; but developing an economy-wide plan for the transformation is dangerous.
Most emissions — 78 per cent — come from the top 20 economies, the G20. How are these nations going? The UN report (from late last year) said only five had pledged to long-term zero net targets. The remaining 15 “have not yet committed to zero emission targets”.
No genius is required to understand why. It stares us in the face. The UN Environmental Program says that, on present trends, the world is shooting towards a 3.2 per cent temperature rise, far above the Paris Agreement goals, and that “collective ambition must increase more than fivefold” to achieve the preferred Paris target. That’s right — fivefold.
The UN says the Paris goal of keeping the temperature increase to 1.5C means emissions must fall by 7.6 per cent each year up to 2050. But they are increasing with no sign of peaking.
One of the world’s pioneering and best-known US environmentalists, Bill McKibben, called this number “almost incomprehensively large”.
“No individual country, not to mention the planet, has ever cut emissions at that rate for a single year, much less a continuous decade,” McKibben said.
He added in his recent New York Review of Books article that the Paris goals — those goals governments seem unable to reach — were “modest”. McKibben said the Paris targets of limiting temperature increases to 1.5C or 2C were no longer “safe” outcomes; scientists had been too conservative. So the chasm between science and delivery is under pressure at both ends.
The big emitters, China, the US and India, are not signed up to the 2050 benchmark. This may change. If this is still the situation at the next election, it is a problem for Labor.
China accounts for 29 per cent of emissions, the US accounts for 16 per cent but Australia, which is responsible for only 1.3 per cent of emissions, must make, according to Labor, the 2050 pledge that the big emitters decline to. How prudent is that and how will this play in an election campaign?
The US presidential election will constitute a decisive judgment on climate change, with Donald Trump — quitting Paris and opposed to multilateral climate action — facing a Democratic nominee favouring a brand of New Green Deal (they all do).
Any Trump victory will be a body blow for the Paris model, its credibility, the 2050 benchmarks and Labor.
An early study of the hypocritical nature of 2050 climate politics comes from New Zealand. The Ardern government, amid applause, passed the world’s second zero carbon act last year, but it contains no new policies to cut emissions and exempts methane emissions from agriculture and waste, representing 40 per cent of the country’s emissions. It is a mix between gesture and fraud, with analysis showing New Zealand is set to miss its 2030 targets by a wide margin.
Labor now seeks a winning position on Bill Shorten’s losing position from the election: that the cost of inaction is greater than the cost of action. Sounds good, but this is not the test. Nobody is proposing inaction. There are many different ways to reach the 2050 benchmark. The most efficient involves an underlying carbon price, and there are multiple other disastrous pathways that would punish the economy, jobs and households.
The point is elemental: everything depends on the pathway. And Labor, like so many nations, cannot reveal its pathway because it is clueless. It hasn’t decided. It has pledged to an Australian transformation because the 2050 end point looks irresistible but it has no idea of the method, principles or policies to get there. Labor pledges to reveal its pathway before the election.
Albanese’s boldness constitutes a realignment in our politics. Labor shares carbon neutrality at 2050 with many countries — he says 73 — along with all the states, and industry groups including the Business Council of Australia. So Labor is aligned with the big end of town, the banks, corporates and high-income virtue signallers. This may become a double-edged alignment.
The BCA is ahead of Labor. It has released a discussion paper and will soon issue a blueprint on how it believes Australia should achieve the 2050 targets. But consider the early signals: a carbon price is the best means; massive investment of at least $22bn each year for 30 years is necessary; coal-fired power will need to be replaced by a combination of renewables plus gas and storage, or nuclear power; 19 million cars will need to be replaced probably with electric vehicles; and decarbonisation will present specific challenges for industrial and agricultural emissions.
Albanese’s statements suggest he will finesse the 2050 target, implying few or no losers — and that is a fantasy.
The UN is upfront in saying that zero net emissions by 2050 is transformational. It will permeate the economy, energy, emission reduction, power prices, lifestyle, eating habits, private and public transport and agriculture. The UN Emissions Gap Report says: “Legitimacy for decarbonisation therefore requires massive social mobilisation and investments in social cohesion to avoid exclusion and resistance.” Decoded: the risk is social dislocation and a virulent political backlash.
The Financial Times’ chief economics commentator, Martin Wolf, a supporter of action but a realist, said there have been two energy revolutions so far — the agricultural revolution, and the industrial revolution.
The coming clean energy revolution means moving beyond fossil fuels “almost completely”. Wolf said the 2050 transition was technologically feasible but still constituted a “revolution” requiring a global effort “we have never seen before”.
Do you think for one minute that Labor understood the magnitude of what it was proposing? This was seen as smart politics. Taking this decision last month, believing the public attitude on climate change had shifted decisively, was dubious.
The world’s prospect of making the 2050 benchmark doesn’t look good — although that, of course, may change.
But it is fatuous to pretend pledging this benchmark has only upside for Australia. It has upside only if a stack of tough decisions are taken at home. The suspicion remains this decision was taken precisely to avoid and delay these tough decisions, not advance them. But we shall see.
Claims that the Morrison government has the same zero net emissions policy as Labor courtesy of signing the Paris Agreement are false. This is because the agreement itself specifies neither a deadline for the target nor the method — and the deadline and the method are everything that matters.
As for the Morrison government, it can launch a negative political assault, saying Labor has a target but no plan. But that’s not enough. The Prime Minister must govern and he must lead.
Morrison’s problem is he needs a credible climate change policy in a situation demanding more action, yet internal politics means he cannot pledge to the 2050 benchmark — and that exposes Australia to financial retaliation. The point is this: unless Morrison finishes with a credible position, his attacks on Labor cannot succeed.
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