• Australia’s emissions targets for 2030 and 2050 are unachievable, unaffordable and pointless – as they will not significantly affect global emissions
• Greenhouse gas emissions have risen exponentially since 1850, with growth slowing in recent years. However, this slowdown is more so from economic factors and efficiency gains, rather than climate action policies
• Australia’s emissions have fallen since 2011, but largely due to accounting tricks, COVID-19 impacts and offshoring of manufacturing
• Public opinion will eventually turn against ambitious climate targets due to high costs and minimal benefits
Agree that our policy will likely follow Trump, as will the entire globe. Disagree that efforts are pointless and also disagree that 2050 is unachievable. 2030 is looking tough because much of the obvious steps needed were avoided by the previous federal government and we are playing catch up.
The US has been critical for gaining international consensus on climate action. If the US abandons that diplomatic leadership role, there really isn’t an obvious voice to pull things together. With that history, lack of American ambition will flow out broadly.
This is also an area where nations like Australia can have an outsized impact in setting an example and strongly driving diplomatic efforts to push others to follow.
The US is less critical, do not expect it to take a leadership, as compared to spoiler, role.
Maybe more attention could be paid to players outside the Anglosphere and give some credit to others. For instance Brazil played a critical role in the success of the Rio Summit, it took up the reins when it was headed for disaster.
A combination of Europeans and a core of developing countries. In Africa south of the Sahara, maybe South Africa. With Lula in power in Brazil, prospects are better. The Brazilians are skilful in international negotiations, but dropped out with Bolsanaro. While the South Americans all have bilateral differences, maybe they can come together.
Additionally , cooperation between the BRICS means that they have scope for dialogue, they know each other, even if they have divergent approaches on climate change.
I would expect new groupings, identifying common ground on key issues.
I think the days have gone when extensive compromising with the US was perceived as the only way to get an international agreement.
Of course the US is never irrelevant, but we are now in a multipolar world.
With the way the government has framed our electricity market, not sure the public are willing to pay more on top of all they are already paying for clean energy. Yeh its nice in Theory, but end of the day people just want cheap electricity.
If they acted in everyday australians best interests and taxed the gas companies more and helped australians have cheaper electircity then maybe there could be an argument we could do more.
Maybe have an opt in policy like they do on flights to offset your carbon. Then also add extra charges on fuel sold to private jet and luxury yacht operators.
China are the ones that need to do the heavy lifting and maybe they are, nuclear plants, hydro plants, but still lots of coal plants. lots of EV vehicles.
But still production of stuff for the west, and the willingness to use “dirty (polluting)” products to maximise the cheapest price and bring down material prices across the board from cleaner projects but not willing to pay for them.
this is the first year where China has built more solar than coal.
the driver of high prices is largely from coal plants shifting their daily levelled costs into the evening as they are making negative profit during the day. When coal has departed, that large financial burden will be removed from the daily energy market.
Canada has a heap of nuclear and is investing massively in storage because they have a huge “excess nuclear” problem outside peak times, in the same way as our coal plants are struggling. Their substantial “base load” capacity brings similar complications that Australia is currently building storage to solve.
Hottest day in recorded history was broken again. 17.15 now. We are certain to break the hottest July in history making it 14 months in a row of setting new monthly records. Meanwhile, they’re jailing climate protesters in the UK for 5 years.
