This July 28, 2021, photo shows a general view of Bondi Beach on a sunny day in Sydney. (SAEED KHAN / AFP)
Australia needs to make deep cuts to its greenhouse gas emissions this decade if it is serious about tackling global warming, according to the Australia-based think tank, Climate Council.
The Climate Council said Australia should be cutting its emissions 21 times faster than it is if the country aims to play its part in avoiding the catastrophic consequences of worsening climate change
The country is under increasing pressure from global leaders, businesses, and environmental groups to commit to net zero emissions by 2050.
At a virtual conference on Aug 19, the US President’s deputy special envoy for climate change, Jonathan Pershing, said Australia’s current emissions reduction commitments were not enough.
“It would be really helpful to see Australia step forward with a more ambitious effort,” Pershing said.
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Britain’s minister of state, Alok Sharma, who is president of the climate conference – which will be held in Glasgow later this year – called on Australia to do more.
The former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon recently said that by not acting on climate change, Australia now risks its international standing.
China’s President Xi Jinping in a speech to the 75th annual session of the United Nations General Assembly in September last year said China aims to have CO2 emission peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.
The Climate Council in its analysis of Australia’s latest ‘Quarterly Update of the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory’, released on Aug 31, said the race is on for Australia to respond to accelerating climate change by making “rapid and deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions this decade but the latest Federal Government data shows Australia is barely out of the starting blocks when it comes to responding”.
The Climate Council said Australia should be cutting its emissions 21 times faster than it is if the country aims to play its part in avoiding the catastrophic consequences of worsening climate change.
The world’s climate experts issued a “code red” for the climate crisis recently in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The quarterly emissions data released by the Australian federal government reveals a “sluggish and inadequate” national response, Climate Council senior researcher Tim Baxter said.
“The data proves the federal government’s climate response is woefully inadequate. They say we’re ‘on track’ to cut emissions by one third of one percent per year over the next decade.
“That is a snail’s pace – not the rapid and deep reductions we need to be making this decade,” Baxter said.
For Australia to play its part, the Climate Council says it should be aiming for a 75 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2030.
This would equate to emissions cuts occurring 21 times faster than what the federal government is managing, according to the Climate Council.
“Addressing the climate crisis is a race, but Australia’s response remains sluggish and woefully inadequate. We should be doing everything we humanly can to respond to a threat as serious and pressing as this,” Baxter said.
“Instead, we are making slow and painful progress at a national level that too often comes down to dumb luck, or happenstance. The federal government has no climate or energy policy which is resulting in emissions cuts.”
Instead, the government relies on factors like lower transport demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he added.
In the lead up to the next major United Nations climate talks in Glasgow in November many countries have increased their 2030 targets including the United States (50-52 percent), the United Kingdom (68 percent), Canada (40-45 percent) and Japan (46 percent).
Australia has set an inadequate target of 26-28 percent and has refused to increase it since 2015, despite committing to do so as part of the international agreement it has signed up to.
The Climate Council has recommended a science-based target for Australia of reducing emissions to 75 percent below 2005 levels and reaching net zero by 2035.
“Other countries are stepping up to the challenge – including all our strategic allies and trading partners – but we are nowhere to be seen. Australia needs a credible climate response, and that means making decisions that result in deep and rapid emissions cuts this decade. That’s what most Australians want, and expect,” Baxter said.
Australia’s Energy Minister Angus Taylor, however, said the government's approach is the right one, given that the emissions cuts had come at the same time as economic growth.
“While there is still work to be done, this data shows the government's comprehensive suite of policies to meet its emissions-reduction commitments, encourage innovation and back new and emerging low emissions technologies (that) are working,” Taylor said.
According to the Quarterly Update Australia produced 494.2 million tonnes of carbon emissions in the 12 months to March 2021.
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It marks a 5 percent, or 27.8 million tonnes, reduction from the previous 12 months and is Australia's lowest annual emissions figure since the data was first collected in 1990.
Emissions from the transport sector fell 13.2 percent amid strict travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Electricity generation emissions fell 5.6 percent.
The data showed that Australia's carbon emissions have fallen 20.8 percent since 2005.
Taylor said the data proved Australia could "meet and beat" its current commitment to reducing emissions by 26-28 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.