COP31 failure exposes Australia’s shrinking influence | Alexander Downer

There was no Trump, no Xi, no Modi – or even Albo – but that didn’t stop Adelaide’s Rio trio’s mission to change the world’s weather, writes Alexander Downer.

As a loyal South Australian, I was disappointed that Turkey successfully won the race to host COP31 next year.

If it had been in Adelaide, it would have brought 50,000 or so people to our city generating plenty of economic activity.

It would also have given us some global publicity, which is never a bad thing for the tourist industry. But there we are.

The state government spent millions of dollars preparing for an event which will never happen.

That probably won’t do them too much harm when it comes to the state election next March. But electorally, expect there to be quite a negative reaction to the three mayors who made the eccentric trip to Brazil with a view to changing the world’s weather!

There are two things to reflect on coming from this exercise: Firstly, we’ve saved a huge amount of money.

It’s estimated that COP31 would have cost something like $2 billion. There would have been massive disruption for several weeks to life in the CBD.

And just imagine jamming another 50,000 people into our city for a couple of weeks.

Adelaide Lord Mayor Jane-Lomax Smith, Mitcham Mayor Heather Holmes-Ross and Onkaparinga Mayor Moira Were at COP30 World Mayors Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Picture: Instagram

Where would they all stay? I was thinking we could rent out our house at an exorbitant price to a delegation from, say, Iceland or Botswana.

Or maybe just to a collection of climate change activists who have never bothered to read the IPCC reports and scream at us that we should follow the science.

It would be nice to collect a lot of money from them and spend it on installing a much-needed new airconditioning system.

The disruption would be a price worth paying if we could all be convinced that the meeting would achieve anything of great substance for the world. I’m pretty sure it would have been meaningless. The COP meetings are becoming decreasingly important.

The recent one in Brazil was attended by delegations from all over the world but this time fewer heads of government attended than at previous meetings.

The world’s biggest CO2 emitter is China, and its president did not bother to attend. Nor did the Prime Minister of India or the President of the United States.

Collectively, those countries emit 52% of global emissions.

So, if the leaders of countries that emit more than half the world’s CO2 did not even attend the meeting then that says something about its importance.

If you are a climate change activist or just a passive catastrophist about the climate, then you might fuss that our Prime Minister had not bothered to go. That was an interesting decision considering our bid to host the next COP.

Australia's Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen attends the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30), in Belem, Brazil. Picture: Reuters/Anderson Coelho

But just as I would confess to being aghast at the chutzpah of the Lord Mayor and the mayors of Mitcham and Onkaparinga making that trip to Brazil, I think the Prime Minister made the right decision.

He saved taxpayers’ money, and if he had gone, he would have been humiliated by his decision to cave in to Turkey.

Just think of the CO2 the Prime Minister has saved. The flight from Canberra to Belem is about 15,000 kilometres. The VIP plane would have burnt about 236

tonnes of fuel and produced about 700 tonnes of CO2. So, the Prime Minister has saved all that, even if, unfortunately, our three mayors did not.

Secondly, the failure of Australia to secure for Adelaide COP 31 is a reflection of our declining influence in the world.

Turkey, of course, is strategically critical, straddling Europe and Asia, and is a significant player in the Middle East.

But there again, Australia used to be able to leverage its natural advantages as a G20 country, as a significant contributor to the Indo-Pacific region, as an ally of the United States, as a Commonwealth country and as an erstwhile contributor to everything from peacekeeping forces to international diplomacy on nuclear arms control.

Australia was also a country admired for the strength of its economic policymaking.

Over the last decade, Australia has just slipped back into the mainstream of Western-oriented countries.

Policy initiatives in Australia are not discussed out of the country any longer although last week a professor at Stanford University gave me the rounds of the table for the federal government’s plan to tax unrealised capital gains.

It’s a sad reflection of the state of Australia standing in the world that we can’t persuade the world to come to Adelaide for the COP31 meeting, and it’s a pity for Adelaide because it would have brought tens of millions of dollars into our city.
But don’t worry if you’re a climate change activist or catastrophist you can always fly to Turkey with your sandwich board proclaiming “the end of the world is nigh”!

And one final footnote to reflect on.

The International Energy Agency produced a report before COP30 which estimated that the global consumption of fossil fuels will continue to increase between now and 2050 and that the world would require a 40pc increase in energy consumption between now and the middle of the century.

Originally published as COP31 failure exposes Australia’s shrinking influence | Alexander Downer