Extract from The Guardian
The maths doesn’t add up – Australia’s emissions are trending up and
yet we are meeting pledges to cut them. But it all makes sense in the
complicated and chaotic world of climate negotiations
Fish swimming through the coral on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
Photograph: William West/AFP/Getty Images
The
numbers look clear. In 1990, Australia emitted 564m tonnes of carbon
dioxide. In 2005 that rose to 611m. By 2014-15 that had fallen a bit to
565m. But in 2029-30, the latest published projections say we will emit
724m tonnes.
They have gone up and down and they might not be rising by as much as if we’d never heard the words “climate change”, but in absolute terms our greenhouse emissions are trending up, not down.
And yet over those same decades we will have solemnly given three different national pledges to reduce our emissions and, as the environment minister, Greg Hunt, keeps enthusiastically reminding us, in every case we will “meet and beat” our pledges.
How can it be possible for national emissions to rise over 30 years while a country “meets and beats” successive promises to reduce them? The answer takes us first deep into the complicated and chaotic world of international climate negotiations and then to the dizzying heights of political spin.
We start in 1997 in the Japanese city of Kyoto, where John Howard’s environment minister Robert Hill held out late into the night for a special deal recognising Australia’s reliance on fossil fuel industries.
And in the end he got it. Whereas Europe promised to reduce emissions by 8% by 2012, compared with the base year of 1990, and the US agreed to cut by 7%, Australia was one of three countries allowed to increase emissions – by 8%.
But then, long past the point where most delegates were supposed to have left and many had not slept in days or were passed out on sofas or behind pot plants, Australia insisted on yet another special deal – so particular to our circumstances it was called “the Australia Clause”. It allowed the inclusion of land-use changes in emission calculations in a way that meant restrictions that had already been imposed on large-scale land clearing – especially in Queensland – allowed Australia to rest assured it had achieved its new target before it even signed up to it.
I reported on that meeting for the Australian Financial Review – the dusty boxes of files dredged from the backrooms of the parliamentary library remind of the brinkmanship Australia engaged in, still demanding the Australia Clause changes when the translators had already left the building and the cleaners had started rearranging the room for the next scheduled conference.
When it was done, the European environment spokesman raged that the deal was “wrong and immoral ... and a disgrace” and the then executive director of the Australia Institute, Clive Hamilton, quickly calculated that Australia’s emissions were likely to come in under the new target, without the need to do anything.
Hill got an ovation when he returned to cabinet and John Howard declared the deal to be “splendid”. News Ltd columnist Piers Akerman said those accolades weren’t enough, Hill should “have been greeted by massed brass bands and a 21-gun salute” because he had “saved Australia’s economy from the destructive forces of environmental activism”.
Nevertheless, the Howard government still refused to ratify the treaty, following the lead of George Bush, who by this time had replaced Bill Clinton. Ratification had to wait for the Rudd government to be elected 10 years later. It then delivered precisely the windfall that had been predicted before the ink was dry in Kyoto.
Fast forward to 2009 in the Danish capital, Copenhagen. Malcolm Turnbull had just been dumped as Liberal leader because he was determined not to lead a party as committed to climate change as he was, and domestic politics was descending into the six intellectually-arid years of “climate wars”. Nevertheless, Australia’s major parties maintained a bipartisan agreement for a next-stage target – that they should promise to cut emissions by between 5% and 25% (compared with 2000 levels) by 2020.
In the domestic political melee, the target “range” we had promised internationally shrank back down to just the absolute minimum 5% cut, which was originally the amount we were prepared to do even if other countries did nothing at all. Everyone just stopped talking about the higher targets.
By this time, I was reporting on the summit for the Australian, watching Kevin Rudd as he sat through all-night talks with world leaders, only to see the chances of a deal scuttled by China’s stone-walling. (He used the memorable phrase “rat-fucking” to describe that attitude, subsequently reported despite the briefing being off the record.) The meeting ended in chaos after even longer periods of sleeplessness than Kyoto, with then climate change minister Penny Wong looking close to collapse at a 4am press conference. But it did inscribe the various national promises into an accord, which in subsequent meetings was bolted into the UN processes.
And Australia was again able to meet the new minimum 2020 target while doing very little by way of emission-reducing policies. First, because we overshot the first +8% “21-gun salute” target, we got to “carry over” the excess to the second “commitment period”, ending in 2020. Hill’s deal in Kyoto greased the path for Rudd’s in Copenhagen.
Second, lower electricity demand thanks to manufacturing industry closures, the enthusiastic uptake of solar by Australian households, the drought and lower coal exports than expected, mean emissions have fallen without any economy-wide carbon policy.
In 2008, when Rudd was devising the emissions trading scheme, Australia thought it would have to find a way to reduce cumulative greenhouse emissions by 1,335m tonnes by 2020 to get to minus-5%. That forecast has been steadily revised down and this week Hunt announced it was now nothing at all.
This is mainly due to things outside government control. But other factors include: the impact of the renewable energy target and the government’s Direct Action policy; 22m tonnes of free abatement we received in the form of international permits from landfill operators, who ended up with a windfall gain after the abolition of the emissions trading scheme; and 128m tonnes of “carryover” we are counting. Under the accounting rules that means we are indeed already on track to meet our minus-5% target, even though private sector forecasts (the official ones have not been released yet) say actual emissions will rise by 4%.
Hunt described the idea that we should consider actual emissions as “one of the oddest and strangest and I’ve got to say ... desperate arguments” he had heard, and pointed out that the accounting rules had been accepted internationally and by successive Australian governments. Which is true. But when most people hear that Australia is meeting an emissions reduction target, they probably get the impression that our actual emissions are, you know, being reduced.
Now fast forward to the Paris meeting next week, attended by Turnbull on Monday, when all 130 leaders in attendance will give a short statement in two simultaneous speed-speaking sessions. (Turnbull is sandwiched between the leaders of Equatorial Guinea and Norway). Hunt will also be there for the first week and the foreign minister, Julie Bishop, for the second.
Australia is promising to reduce emissions by between 26% and 28% by 2030, based on 2005 levels. The “based on 2005 levels” bit is important, because that calculates our percentage reduction from the highest base year. It’s a lacklustre but not ridiculously low goal when compared with other developed economies.
The aim of Paris is to build a system to review and rachet up these volunteered national commitments, and Australia is playing a constructive role in those negotiations.
Australia is not the only country to have tried to use international rules to its domestic advantage. But Australia’s history of special deals now raises some big domestic policy questions.
First, since the 5% target for 2020 is clearly a doddle, and since the rest of the world is clearly acting, why don’t we take on a higher 2020 target, as we promised?
Second, the factors that have been pushing our emissions down are unwinding. Land clearing is increasing, we are generating more electricity from the dirtiest brown coal since the carbon price repeal and big LNG projects are coming on stream that will also push up our greenhouse gases. Neither major party has yet detailed policies that could turn that around.
And third, the accounting rules may not come to our rescue another time. It is not clear whether we will be able to “carry over” again, although Hunt has indicated we would like to. But the task is now also bigger than any “carry over” could massage.
After decades of fighting and fudging, Australia will have to really do something about its greenhouse emissions this time.
They have gone up and down and they might not be rising by as much as if we’d never heard the words “climate change”, but in absolute terms our greenhouse emissions are trending up, not down.
And yet over those same decades we will have solemnly given three different national pledges to reduce our emissions and, as the environment minister, Greg Hunt, keeps enthusiastically reminding us, in every case we will “meet and beat” our pledges.
How can it be possible for national emissions to rise over 30 years while a country “meets and beats” successive promises to reduce them? The answer takes us first deep into the complicated and chaotic world of international climate negotiations and then to the dizzying heights of political spin.
We start in 1997 in the Japanese city of Kyoto, where John Howard’s environment minister Robert Hill held out late into the night for a special deal recognising Australia’s reliance on fossil fuel industries.
And in the end he got it. Whereas Europe promised to reduce emissions by 8% by 2012, compared with the base year of 1990, and the US agreed to cut by 7%, Australia was one of three countries allowed to increase emissions – by 8%.
But then, long past the point where most delegates were supposed to have left and many had not slept in days or were passed out on sofas or behind pot plants, Australia insisted on yet another special deal – so particular to our circumstances it was called “the Australia Clause”. It allowed the inclusion of land-use changes in emission calculations in a way that meant restrictions that had already been imposed on large-scale land clearing – especially in Queensland – allowed Australia to rest assured it had achieved its new target before it even signed up to it.
I reported on that meeting for the Australian Financial Review – the dusty boxes of files dredged from the backrooms of the parliamentary library remind of the brinkmanship Australia engaged in, still demanding the Australia Clause changes when the translators had already left the building and the cleaners had started rearranging the room for the next scheduled conference.
When it was done, the European environment spokesman raged that the deal was “wrong and immoral ... and a disgrace” and the then executive director of the Australia Institute, Clive Hamilton, quickly calculated that Australia’s emissions were likely to come in under the new target, without the need to do anything.
Hill got an ovation when he returned to cabinet and John Howard declared the deal to be “splendid”. News Ltd columnist Piers Akerman said those accolades weren’t enough, Hill should “have been greeted by massed brass bands and a 21-gun salute” because he had “saved Australia’s economy from the destructive forces of environmental activism”.
Nevertheless, the Howard government still refused to ratify the treaty, following the lead of George Bush, who by this time had replaced Bill Clinton. Ratification had to wait for the Rudd government to be elected 10 years later. It then delivered precisely the windfall that had been predicted before the ink was dry in Kyoto.
Fast forward to 2009 in the Danish capital, Copenhagen. Malcolm Turnbull had just been dumped as Liberal leader because he was determined not to lead a party as committed to climate change as he was, and domestic politics was descending into the six intellectually-arid years of “climate wars”. Nevertheless, Australia’s major parties maintained a bipartisan agreement for a next-stage target – that they should promise to cut emissions by between 5% and 25% (compared with 2000 levels) by 2020.
In the domestic political melee, the target “range” we had promised internationally shrank back down to just the absolute minimum 5% cut, which was originally the amount we were prepared to do even if other countries did nothing at all. Everyone just stopped talking about the higher targets.
By this time, I was reporting on the summit for the Australian, watching Kevin Rudd as he sat through all-night talks with world leaders, only to see the chances of a deal scuttled by China’s stone-walling. (He used the memorable phrase “rat-fucking” to describe that attitude, subsequently reported despite the briefing being off the record.) The meeting ended in chaos after even longer periods of sleeplessness than Kyoto, with then climate change minister Penny Wong looking close to collapse at a 4am press conference. But it did inscribe the various national promises into an accord, which in subsequent meetings was bolted into the UN processes.
And Australia was again able to meet the new minimum 2020 target while doing very little by way of emission-reducing policies. First, because we overshot the first +8% “21-gun salute” target, we got to “carry over” the excess to the second “commitment period”, ending in 2020. Hill’s deal in Kyoto greased the path for Rudd’s in Copenhagen.
Second, lower electricity demand thanks to manufacturing industry closures, the enthusiastic uptake of solar by Australian households, the drought and lower coal exports than expected, mean emissions have fallen without any economy-wide carbon policy.
In 2008, when Rudd was devising the emissions trading scheme, Australia thought it would have to find a way to reduce cumulative greenhouse emissions by 1,335m tonnes by 2020 to get to minus-5%. That forecast has been steadily revised down and this week Hunt announced it was now nothing at all.
This is mainly due to things outside government control. But other factors include: the impact of the renewable energy target and the government’s Direct Action policy; 22m tonnes of free abatement we received in the form of international permits from landfill operators, who ended up with a windfall gain after the abolition of the emissions trading scheme; and 128m tonnes of “carryover” we are counting. Under the accounting rules that means we are indeed already on track to meet our minus-5% target, even though private sector forecasts (the official ones have not been released yet) say actual emissions will rise by 4%.
Hunt described the idea that we should consider actual emissions as “one of the oddest and strangest and I’ve got to say ... desperate arguments” he had heard, and pointed out that the accounting rules had been accepted internationally and by successive Australian governments. Which is true. But when most people hear that Australia is meeting an emissions reduction target, they probably get the impression that our actual emissions are, you know, being reduced.
Now fast forward to the Paris meeting next week, attended by Turnbull on Monday, when all 130 leaders in attendance will give a short statement in two simultaneous speed-speaking sessions. (Turnbull is sandwiched between the leaders of Equatorial Guinea and Norway). Hunt will also be there for the first week and the foreign minister, Julie Bishop, for the second.
Australia is promising to reduce emissions by between 26% and 28% by 2030, based on 2005 levels. The “based on 2005 levels” bit is important, because that calculates our percentage reduction from the highest base year. It’s a lacklustre but not ridiculously low goal when compared with other developed economies.
The aim of Paris is to build a system to review and rachet up these volunteered national commitments, and Australia is playing a constructive role in those negotiations.
Australia is not the only country to have tried to use international rules to its domestic advantage. But Australia’s history of special deals now raises some big domestic policy questions.
First, since the 5% target for 2020 is clearly a doddle, and since the rest of the world is clearly acting, why don’t we take on a higher 2020 target, as we promised?
Second, the factors that have been pushing our emissions down are unwinding. Land clearing is increasing, we are generating more electricity from the dirtiest brown coal since the carbon price repeal and big LNG projects are coming on stream that will also push up our greenhouse gases. Neither major party has yet detailed policies that could turn that around.
And third, the accounting rules may not come to our rescue another time. It is not clear whether we will be able to “carry over” again, although Hunt has indicated we would like to. But the task is now also bigger than any “carry over” could massage.
After decades of fighting and fudging, Australia will have to really do something about its greenhouse emissions this time.
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