Australia fiddles while the world burns… another lost decade

If nothing else, the 6th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report should put an end to the nonsense from Canberra’s political journalists that “net zero by 2050” is in some way a meaningful benchmark of effective climate action.

The world now faces reaching 1.5 degrees of warming well before 2040 under all scenarios modelled by the IPCC working group, and two degrees between 2041-60 under three of them. Even under the second best scenario, we’re headed toward two degrees by the end of the century. For a country that, like so many others, is already suffering dramatic consequences from global heating, that’s a frightening prospect that bodes poorly for Australians’ living standards and health.

As has been clear from the significant lifting of commitments this year by countries uncorrupted by fossil fuel corporations, what we do between now and 2030 is crucial to locking in the least worst scenario modelled by the IPCC — in which the world briefly rises above 1.5 degrees but then slowly comes back down to just below it. The consequences of even that relatively limited rise in temperatures will play out for centuries and millennia.

But Australia remains among the climate denialists with its 2030 target — a meagre 26-28% on 2005 greenhouse gas levels, and we won’t come close to meeting that, however much Scott Morrison lies that we will. Far more dramatic action is required from one of the world’s most carbon-addicted economies — at least the 45% cut that Labor took to the 2019 election and has now abandoned.

We’re now left with the task of dramatically curbing emissions in a single decade, with the attendant economic and political consequences. In another world, we could have been looking at a full decade of the operation of the Gillard government’s efficient and effective carbon pricing mechanism that began reducing emissions with minimal impact on consumers and business. Instead we’ve wasted a decade as fossil fuel interests and the people they own in the Coalition, Labor, the union movement and the media have stymied action.

What makes our inaction all the more appalling is that the policy tools and the technological tools have all been available throughout that lost decade. Worse, our failure has come at a high opportunity cost. Former Liberal senator and businesswoman Sue Boyce, who crossed the floor with Judith Troeth to vote for the Kevin Rudd-Malcolm Turnbull version of an emissions trading scheme in 2009, argued succinctly back then that there were commercial advantages to moving early on climate action. Even the fossil fuel-aligned International Energy Agency has shown how a rapid take-up of renewables and phasing out of coal-fired power will still generate huge numbers of jobs.

The government’s response to the IPCC report was a mockery of the science. Scott Morrison said nothing in the wake of the report’s release. It was left to scandal-plagued Energy Minister Angus Taylor — currently working to force consumers to subsidise coal-fired power stations — to issue a contemptuous statement. “When it comes to emissions reduction, our record is one of delivery and achievement that Australians can be proud of. Our technology-led approach to reducing emissions will see Australia continue to play its part in the global effort to combat climate change without compromising our economy or jobs.”

Taylor and Morrison aren’t directly responsible for our lost decade. But they happily voted to repeal a highly effective carbon pricing scheme in 2014 and rose to senior positions in the years of inaction that followed — and which became, after Malcolm Turnbull’s ouster, a policy to support fossil fuels, written and purchased by big fossil fuel companies in a corrupt political system.