The federal government says it has “drawn a line” under a decade of slow action on climate change, with a formal commitment to the United Nations to pursue a substantially more ambitious emissions reduction target.
Key points:
- Australia is committed to reducing its emissions by 43% by 2030
- The goal is not yet enough to limit warming well below 2ºC
- The government says its new target marks a line under a decade of “climate wars”
Australia’s commitment to the Paris Agreement will now be to reduce emissions by 43% by 2030 and zero net emissions by 2050.
The previous government had refused to raise its ambitions above the 28 per cent target for 2030, which was set in 2015 ; signed a zero net target at the UN climate conference last year.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen says of the new commitment: “Australia is turning the corner on the climate”.
“A decade of denial and delay is too long a decade,” Bowen said.
“We’ve drawn a line below, we’re moving forward. That’s what the Australian people asked us to do.”
Labor pledged to the most ambitious goal before the election, and it was backed by business groups and environmentalists.
But climate scientists have said it will still fall short of what is needed to limit global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, the commitment made under the Paris Agreement.
And the 43 percent goal is less ambitious than Labor advocated in previous years, which was to reduce emissions by 50 percent by the end of the decade.
Federal climate change policies have been the source of steel clashes between and within major parties, and the climate policy debate has led, directly or indirectly, to spills of leadership on both sides of the aisle.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the new target was an opportunity to end the “climate wars”.
“[This is] an opportunity to find solutions, not arguments. An opportunity to provide certainty in the future for us to achieve this investment, “Albanese said.
One of the key levers that the new government intends to use to reduce emissions is a strengthened “safeguard mechanism”, which sets an emission limit on major pollutants and forces them to pay to offset their emissions if they exceed the limit.
Albanese said investing in renewable energy was also the way to solve the country’s energy crisis, which has threatened blackouts on the east coast and led to rising electricity prices.
Posted 46 minutes ago 46 minutes ago Thu, June 16, 2022 at 12:44 pm, updated 4 minutes ago, 4 minutes ago, Thu, June 16, 2022 at 1:27 AM