Labor will set a new greenhouse gas emissions reduction target for 2035, in a few weeks time, to take to the United Nations climate summit in Brazil in November.
Climate scientists and major environmental groups have called for a cut of 75% from 2005 emissions by 2035, and net zero by 2030. But if Australia sets another climate target that is rigged to be met without real cuts to emissions, this will be an empty gesture.
Australia’s current climate target is a 43% reduction on 2005 levels by 2030 and net zero by 2050. Both targets are inadequate. The way the government measures its progress has been accurately described by The Australia Institute’s Polly Hemming as “cooking the books”.
First, it only includes estimates of domestic emissions. It does not include greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal and gas that it exports.
Australia is the world’s third-largest fossil fuel exporter, after Russia and the United States. However, because Australia exports so much coal, it is the second-largest exporter of fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions, according to research released last year by Professor Bill Hare of Murdoch University.
Second, while the latest inventory released by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) showed a 27% reduction in domestic emissions since 2005, this “reduction” was largely made up of a poorly substantiated estimate of emissions, supposedly captured and absorbed by changes in land use.
According to Dr Emma Lovell, a senior lecturer in the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of New South Wales: “Without accounting for land use, Australia’s emissions have only decreased 3% since 2005, not 27%.”
Disturbingly, the DCCEEW’s last inventory showed that, since 2005, emissions have increased for stationary energy (excluding electricity), transport and fugitive emissions, which are the second, third and fourth sources of emissions. There was no reduction in emissions from industrial processes and product use.
A new inventory, taking the emission “reductions” up to the first quarter of 2025, is due to be released this month, together with modelling on the economic, environmental and budgetary risks posed by the effects of climate change.
The Australian Financial Review’s Ryan Cropp reported on August 12 that Labor was delaying the release of this modelling because it “includes estimates of heat-related fatalities, detailed suburb-level mapping of coastal inundation from sea level rises and ‘shocking’ forecasts of impacts on the agricultural sector”.
While weak and dodgy climate targets may fool some people some of the time, they can’t cheat nature.
The latest Indicators of Global Climate Change report, released in June, found that at current emission levels, a 1.5°C global temperature rise will be unavoidable in a little more than three years; a 1.6°C or 1.7°C rise could be exceeded within nine years.
As the second-biggest exporter of fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions, Australia bears significant responsibility for this, and Labor’s approval of new gas and coal mining expansion makes it directly complicit.
Even before the government-delayed release of the DCCEEW modelling, there is ample evidence of the domestic cost of Australia’s climate roguery.
The Climate Council reports that: Disasters cost the Australian economy $2.2 billion in just the first six months of this year; it is estimated that 80,000 properties across the nation have become effectively uninsurable since 1990, primarily due to worsening climate risks; and annual average farm profits are estimated 23% lower since 2000 due to climate change.
Ordinary folk recognise the gravity of the situation and are trying to do what they can to help the shift to renewables.
A YouGov poll, released this month, shows that 77% want the government to limit risks from extreme weather events.
About four million households have installed solar panels, but poorer households cannot afford to, and a growing proportion of people forced to rent their homes are also missing out on cheaper power. Given the growing housing crisis, a massive program of building good quality, solar equipped and insulated public housing would seem to be a no-brainer.
Instead, Labor is still approving giant fossil fuel projects, such as Woodside’s Burrup hub expansion, which will produce annual emissions greater than all the country’s coal power stations and more than the combined emissions of 153 individual countries.
Federal and state governments, over 2024–2025, provided $14.9 billion in subsidies and tax breaks for fossil-fuel producers and major users — a 3% increase on 2023–24.
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