Should we be cosying up to the UN’s fruit-and-veg alarmists on climate?

Fruit and veg just once a year? A $100 lamb roast? Today on our daily news podcast The Front – wild claims about climate change and how to sort truth from fantasy.

The Front podcast: Is climate change stealing your salad?

Carbon capture and storage is back in the energy conversation – and investment in wind farms is collapsing. That’s as the Government backs away from a United Nations climate chief’s claim that fruit and veggies might become a once-a-year treat if we don’t speed up the energy transition.

Today – where are we actually heading on climate, and is cosying up with the UN a good idea?

Claire Harvey, The Front host: Australia has a long and proud history of attention grabbing moments in the debate about climate and energy, From Barnaby Joyce …

Barnaby Joyce: I don’t think your working mothers are gonna be very happy when they’re paying over $100 for a roast.

Claire Harvey: To Scott Morrison …

Scott Morrison: This is coal. Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared. It’s coal. It was dug up by men and women who work and live in the electorates of those who sit opposite …

Claire Harvey: And now, a UN climate change czar says extreme weather events are becoming so frequent we might have to change our diets completely.

Simon Stiell: Unchecked, climate change would cripple Australia’s food production. Today’s supermarket price pain will look like a picnic, with mega-droughts making fresh fruit and veg a once-a-year treat.

Claire Harvey: That’s a voice actor reading the words of Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – and he made this claim in a speech in Sydney. Here’s some audio of Simon Stiell’s speech, published on the UN’s YouTube channel.

Simon Stiell: This is the moment to get behind a climate plan that doesn’t just write that vision into policy, but delivers in spades for your people. So don’t settle for what’s easy. Bog standard is beneath you. Go for what smarts by going big. Go for will build lasting wealth and national security. Go for what will change the game and stand the test of time.

Claire Harvey: Climate minister Chris Bowen – who met with Stiell on Tuesday – seemed to recognise Stiell’s intervention might not be helpful. A voice actor is reading part of a statement released by the minister.

Chris Bowen: Targets are easier set than met – we will set a target informed by the expert advice in the national interest.

Sarah Ison is a federal political reporter with The Australian.

Sarah Ison: Simon Stiell is the UN’s top climate diplomat. He goes around the world and talks to leaders of countries like Australia about their climate ambitions and essentially presents the UN view, which is often for pretty much every country, do more, go harder, go as high as you can with those ambitious targets. So he’s in Australia now doing exactly that, meeting with Chris Bowen, who calls Simon Stiell a friend of they’ve gotten to know each other on the international circuit. So it’s been an interesting time seeing him commentate on Australian politics, really, and climate policy as he engages in this tour.

Claire Harvey: Simon Stiell is a politician in his own right – he was a climate minister in Grenada, the Caribbean island group where sea-level rise and extreme storm activity are regarded as an existential threat – and when his conservative New National Party was turfed out of power in 2022, he joined the UN.

Claire Harvey: He made a fairly startling suggestion about fruit and vegetables, what does that mean?

Sarah Ison: Yeah, he said that fruit and vegetables will become this sort of once-a-year treat. What he means by that is that without more climate action and more ambitious emission reduction targets, we’ll see droughts and other major climate events, essentially meaning that fruits and vegetables won’t grow in the same way that we enjoy now and that they’ll be so expensive and or so scarce, that’ll be a once a, year, as he said, treat to enjoy.

Claire Harvey: He’s encouraging Australia to go much faster than we are. Let’s just assess where we’re actually at right now. The Albanese government has a goal of net zero by 2050. What’s the problem with that, according to Simon Stiell?

Sarah Ison: Well, we need to set ambitious 2035 targets, basically show how we’re going to get from here to the 2050 target with that interim target. 2035 needs to be something that, in his view, needs to be really ambitious, set out a blueprint for the near term. And he’s saying that we can’t settle for bog standard as Australians and we need to ‘not just stick with what’s easy’ were his words. Now it’s interesting because by September, the government is expected to announce its 2035 target. It will be interesting to see what that figure is with sort of widely touted to maybe be maybe a 60% figure. I’m sure Simon Stiell would want it to be even higher. He’s been not too prescriptive when asked directly, what does it need to be? But he is obviously saying, go hard, go as hard as you can as reports circulate about what the government’s currently considering ahead of that September deadline.

Claire Harvey: Yeah, the federal government’s got to meet that 2050 target, of course, but it also has to keep the lights on in the meantime. The prime minister’s had to defend the government against environmental activists who say he’s not going fast enough, making decisions like approving the gas project on the North West Shelf to run until 2070. So what are practically the things that the government might be considering doing to go faster?

Sarah Ison: On Tuesday, Chris Bowen announced a 25% increase to the climate capacity investment scheme. Basically, this scheme is about underwriting renewable energy generation like wind and solar. So by increasing the investment in that scheme, you’re essentially trying to underwrite more projects. You’re trying to really boost those renewables, particularly with that target that I mentioned before of more than 80% of our electricity being generated by those renewables in the very near future.

Sarah Ison: The government will just, I think double down in the direction that it’s charted so far. It will not just do a hard pivot from some of the traditional energy sources. And Albanese and Chris Bowen are trying to walk the line of not seeing any huge increase to power prices or market disruption while really delivering on what they say is very much their mandate and being ambitious when it comes to climate change and environmental protection.

Claire Harvey: Every year, nations from around the world meet at a UN Conference of Parties – also known as COP. It’s where big decisions on climate are made. Australia and Turkey both want to host COP 31 in 2026 – it’s turned into quite the diplomatic standoff, with neither country willing to graciously step aside for the other to get the gig. If Australia hosts, it’d be in partnership with our Pacific Island neighbours.

Sarah Ison: I think we saw after Albanese won the 2022 election, and we’ve seen that since, is he likes to seem very, you know, presidential on the international stage. And for Australia to host this, I mean it’s just a huge, it would be a huge historic moment. And I think for someone who wants to make a huge mark on the country, but also the country’s place in the world, Albanese is really, really keen on landing this. The other side of that coin is the scrutiny that goes along with it. Now, the Prime Minister and Energy Minister have talked for a long time that COP needs to be here in Australia because it’s also surrounded by Pacific Island nations. And they would also be part of any COP hosted by Australia. That’s been quite clear. The problem is that they have been demanding for some time, not just under the coalition government, done under the Labor government, for much more to be done on climate change, much more ambition to be taken for this to really be given the seriousness that it deserves in their eyes when they see the issue of climate change as an existential threat.

Sarah Ison: So for Australia to host this and then maybe not have the highest ambition it could that again, Simon Stiell would want to see in a 2035 target. But also potentially be criticised or told to go further by the very colleagues on the international stage that’s hosting this event with those Pacific Island nations. I mean, that could generate quite a lot of bad press, scrutiny, criticism of the Albanese government. So there’s definitely risk that comes with it.

Claire Harvey: Climate has been a landmine for many Australian Prime Ministers. It’s cost the careers of several as we’ve thrashed out the debate over, first, whether climate change was real, and then what to do about it. For Anthony Albanese at the last election, certainly the Greens were basically wiped off the table in terms of the House of Representatives. He doesn’t now have to worry about making sure that he’s winning votes from the Greens of people who care about climate change. Why the need to grandstand on the international stage about this?

Sarah Ison: I mean, that said, the Greens still do hold the balance of power in the Senate and will try to use that to push Albanese and Labor to be ambitious on environment. Why the need to grandstand beyond that? I mean if you look at the other nations from, you know, those that would be part of COP, G7, G20, I think Albanese, he’s on the world stage quite a lot, he enjoys going to those summits, even if he’s just on the sidelines and wants to be seen as a really serious player in a number of ways, but particularly in climate change and the environment. So I think it’s something that he still sees as very central as an international leadership moment. And again, the Greens will still be highly critical of an Albanese government that was given such a smashing mandate, but didn’t do anything with it for the climate. So that is also what some voters, particularly the left, will think of. You know, a lot of people ask after the election, well, okay, you’ve got this huge mandate, what are you going to do?

Claire Harvey: Back at the top of this episode you heard Barnaby Joyce – the Nationals MP who shot to fame talking about $100 lamb roasts back in 2012. It was a warning back then about a carbon tax. Joyce is back in this game now – teaming up with a former Nats leader, Michael McCormack, to make life difficult for Opposition leader Sussan Ley by arguing the Coalition should oppose the net zero target. Joyce has always been a green energy sceptic. McCormack, though, had been more centrist.

Sarah Ison: Well, Barnaby Joyce has sort of been on this train and you’ve mentioned it for some time. What was interesting in the last week or so is those that are joining him, particularly in a fellow former nationals leader, Michael McCormack. That was a surprise to not only us up here in the press gallery, but actually a lot of his colleagues, frankly, a lot of them told me they’ve lost a bit of respect for Michael, who’s always been seen as someone who’s very sensible and middle of the road. Uh, so that really reheated this huge debate on net zero. That said, Nationals say definitely more than half of their party room don’t support net zero. The question is what to do about that. They want to kind of gracefully dismount from this policy. Whereas Barnaby and McCormack going out quite publicly without consulting colleagues and doing a bunch of interviews and doorstops and so on, continuing to spruik this while the Coalition tries to do a more sensible review and get all the voices heard. It caused a lot of frustration within the Coalition ranks and really was very much welcomed by the government who felt like they could kind of sit back this sitting fortnight and watch the Coalition fight among themselves.

Claire Harvey: Investment in the future of energy is really hard. Green hydrogen has basically failed now in Australia with backers pulling out of giant projects that they’d attempted. We’re running a story in the Australian about how wind farm investing in Australia has ground to a halt. Do you feel, Sarah, that the government has big ideas beyond a slight increase in the subsidies that they’re giving to people who are prepared to put their money on the line for these kinds of investments?

Sarah Ison: Yeah, I mean, I think the language of the government would suggest that, you know, Albanese has said on a number of occasions that this decade, you know the 2020s, will define decades to come. And he means that for a number of different sectors and metrics, but particularly in the environment and the climate, and he sees himself and his government as being at the helm of that decade. I think with language like that, with what some might call ideas of grandeur like that, I think it would be surprising for there not to be a real doubling down and further investment, further release of really ambitious policy in this way. He and the greater party want to leave their mark and the climate is a really, really key area where they feel they can do but as you’ve pointed out regarding some of those challenges, lack of investment and so on, it’s a pretty big hill to climb.

Claire Harvey: Sarah Ison is a political reporter with The Australian. You can read all our coverage of federal politics anytime at theaustralian.com.au

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