Images and Ideas: Australia and Climate Change

Smoke rising from wildfires in East Gippsland, Victoria

The wealthiest country in the world also has the highest emissions per capita in the developed world, is by far the biggest exporter of coal in the world, is the biggest exporter of LNG in the world, is one of only five OECD countries whose emissions are rising, and also has among the most favourable opportunities for economic and ecological benefits after transition from a fossil fuel economy to an economy based on renewable energy. This country is cursed by having a political class who have wasted at least a decade in fruitless bickering and ineffective token policies.

The challenge for us is to somehow break the political stalemate and remove the country from being the disgrace of the world in climate policies.

Who is Responsible for the Australian Bushfire Crisis? — Tim Minchin

1) Australia was the wealthiest country in the world in 2018, when measured by median wealth.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-23/australia-tops-median-wealth-per-adult-list/10518082

Australia was also the wealthiest country in the world in 2021 when measured by median wealth.

Australians are the world’s richest people. Australian Financial Review 20th Sept 2022.

2) Australia has the highest rate of carbon emissions per capita in the developed world, by domestically created emissions (not counting carbon exports).

Australia is one of only five OECD countries whose emissions are growing.

A chart showing OECD nations, with Australia one of just five to see levels increase since 2005.

3) If exports of fossil fuels were to be included as well as domestic emissions, the relative contribution of Australia to global climate change would be seen to be even greater.

Should Australia's fossil fuel exports be counted in its share of global carbon emissions? ABC Fact Check.

Australia's exports of coal and LNG have boomed in recent years.

According to figures from the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, in 2016 (the latest year for which comparable global emissions data is available), Australia exported 391.2 million tonnes of coal, made up of 201.9 million tonnes of thermal coal (used mainly for power generation) and 189.2 million tonnes of metallurgical coal (used mainly for steel production).

Coal Exports by Country
Below are the 15 countries that exported the highest dollar value worth of coal during 2018.

Australia: US$47 billion (37.8% of total coal exports)
Indonesia: $20.6 billion (16.6%)
Russia: $17 billion (13.7%)
United States: $12.2 billion (9.8%)
Colombia: $6.6 billion (5.3%)
South Africa: $6.2 billion (5%)
Canada: $5.8 billion (4.7%)
Mongolia: $2.8 billion (2.2%)
China: $786.8 million (0.6%)
Mozambique: $761.6 million (0.6%)
Poland: $722.6 million (0.6%)
Netherlands: $696.7 million (0.6%)
Kazakhstan: $428.2 million (0.3%)
Vietnam: $372.4 million (0.3%)
Czech Republic: $294.2 million (0.2%)
By value, the listed 15 countries shipped 98.3% of global coal exports in 2018.

http://www.worldstopexports.com/coal-exports-country/

Australia's exports of LNG have also boomed, increasing more than five-fold over the past decade.

Australia is now the world's biggest exporter of LNG.

Australia grabs world's biggest LNG exporter crown from Qatar

LNG contributes significantly to Australia's greenhouse gas contribution to the planet, both when it is burned, but also from 'fugitive emissions' during extraction, transport and processing.

Australia’s emissions projections, 2018.

'Problem in waiting': why natural gas will wipe out Australia's emissions gains'.

A recent study from MIT shows that fugitive emissions from gas, which is mostly methane, may have a much worse effect on climate change than had been feared. Ref.

Although politicians favouring 'business as usual' have argued that Australia's emissions only represent 1.3% of global emissions, 'so whatever we do won't make any difference', if exports are included, the prediction is that Australia will represent 13% of global emissions by 2030. Ref.

Coal from six biggest miners in Australia produces more emissions than entire economy.

Ahh, I hear you say, but the taxes they pay are what funds our schools, healthcare etc.

How much tax do they pay?

Ref here, together with other big corporate tax bludgers.

Stop believing in fairy tales: Australia’s coal industry doesn’t employ many people or pay its fair share of tax

Figures for 2020-21

4) Australia is richly endowed with alternative sources of energy which would have major economic and ecological advantages.

Superpower: Australia’s low carbon opportunity, by Prof Ross Garnaut

Podcast here.

5) Media and links

The day that plunged Australia's climate policy into 10 years of inertia. Annabel Crabb

Australia seen as being ‘totally disconnected from reality’ on world stage, climate expert says.

While chunks of Australia’s east burns and Sydney chokes on dangerous smog, the global community is looking at Australia in dismay.

Five years after carbon price repeal, Australia remains in policy abyss

Australia's emissions are rising. It's time for this government to quit pretending

There was some movement in the right direction during the period of the carbon price. But when that was removed in July 2014 by the Abbott Government, the emissions graph continued upwards.

The irony is that one might expect the Coalition to support market mechanisms, rather than direct Government intervention, such as the Emission Reduction Fund, which Abbott brought in in December 2014. That sort of direct intervention is usually associated with socialist states.

Not only does it demonstrably not work, it is commonly associated with corruption as rent-seekers position themselves to get handouts from politicians who decide where the money goes.

It's simple: we need a proper price on carbon. The Australian Financial Review

Seven coal mines are planned for the Galilee Basin, at a time when coal and other fossil fuels should be phasing out.

Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) report came out on 10th December 2019. It rates countries by a number of different factors, including 'Climate Policy'. Australia scored 0.0, and came last out of 57 countries. How embarrassing!

Scott Morrison rejected the report as being 'not credible'. The author of the report refuted his rejection here.

A slight improvement in 2023.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), global pre-tax and post-tax fossil-fuel subsidies in 2017 amounted to $296bn and $5.2trn, respectively, when including knock-on financial impacts (or “externalities”), such as global warming and air pollution. By comparison, global renewable energy subsidies amounted to $140bn in 2016, according to International Energy Agency (IEA) calculations.

The IMF estimates that annual energy subsidies in Australia total $29 billion, representing 2.3 per cent of Australian GDP. On a per capita basis, Australian fossil fuel subsidies amount to $1,198 per person. Ref.

Scott Morrison and the Coalition are fiddling as Australia burns. 'On climate action, the Coalition is the party of wreck, defer and obfuscate, the party with a shameful and indefensible record.' A good political summary by Katharine Murphy.

Scott Morrison and the big lie about climate change: does he think we're that stupid? Excellent summary by Richard Flanagan.

Australian Government Smugness

One of the world’s biggest emitters is trying to fly under the radar at Cop25. The Australian Government's smugness about our climate change policies is based on what has been described as 'dodgy accounting'.

Carryover Credits explained

The Kyoto Protocol (1997 - 2012) was ratified by 36 mostly rich countries, including Australia. It did not include China or India, and was not ratified by the US Senate. Canada withdrew.

The Howard Government declined to ratify Kyoto, but the Rudd Government did shortly after the November 2007 election win.

Annex B parties with binding targets in the second period

Annex B parties with binding targets in the first period but not the second

non-Annex B parties without binding targets

Annex B parties with binding targets in the first period but which withdrew from the Protocol

Signatories to the Protocol that have not ratified

Kyoto Protocol and Australian government action

Greenpeace has called clause 3.7 of the Kyoto Protocol the "Australia clause" on the ground that it unfairly made Australia a major beneficiary. The clause allows countries with a high rate of land clearing in 1990 to set the level in that year as a base. Greenpeace argues that since Australia had an extremely high level of land clearing in 1990, Australia's "baseline" was unusually high compared to other countries.

Government negotiators ensured the Kyoto agreement allowed Australia to have net greenhouse gas emissions of 108% of 1990 levels from 2008 to 2012. (I.e. we were allowed to increase emissions by 8%.)

Australia beat this target because it polluted at a lower rate, meaning emissions by the end of the period were at 103% of the 1990 level. (An increase of 3%). Much of this 'achievement' was by reducing the extreme rate of deforestation, especially in Queensland (see below).

That means the nation was given credits to carry over and use towards subsequent agreements under Kyoto. They are called 'carryover credits'.

In 2012 the Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, sometimes known as Kyoto II, failed to get ratified because not enough countries signed up to it.

For Kyoto 2 - covering emissions from 2013 to 2020 - Australia pledged to cut greenhouse gas to 99.5% of 1990 levels.

Criticism of the Kyoto Protocol. I find James Hansen's criticism cogent.

In 2015 adoption of the Paris Agreement, which is a separate instrument under the UNFCCC rather than an amendment of the Kyoto Protocol. Paris involved 192 countries.

Parties

Signatories

Parties also covered by European Union ratification

At the Cop25 conference in Madrid, the Australian approach of linking events prior to Kyoto to current targets was rejected by most other countries, including the EU, Britain, Germany, and New Zealand. Australia's climate stance sparks anger on final day of UN summit.

The Australia Institute has argued that there is no legal basis for Australia to use Kyoto carryover credits to meet commitments in the Paris Agreement.

Key findings:

There is currently no legal basis for the ‘carryover’ of pre-2021 units from the Kyoto Protocol for use under the Paris Agreement. The Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement are separate treaties.

Even within its own legal framework, the Kyoto Protocol does not permit the carryover of units or underlying reductions beyond the 2013-2020 second commitment period.

Most of the claimed ‘overachievement’ derives directly from the fact that Australia had substantial domestic deforestation emissions in 1990. It would be perverse to reward Australia in 2030 for the existence of large-scale deforestation that took place forty years earlier.

So called ‘overachievement’ can also be said to come directly from Australia's decisions to allow itself an increase of 8% in its emissions in the first Kyoto commitment period compared to 1990 levels and a minimal 0.5% reduction for the second period. Having chosen far less ambitious targets than other countries Australia is now claiming to have ‘overachieved.’

Efforts to seek recognition under the Paris Agreement for these historical artefacts as ‘overachievement’, in an effort to minimize future mitigation efforts, would be antithetical to the goals and principles of the Paris Agreement, to which Australia has itself subscribed as a Party.

Australia’s exploits to water down its climate action through loopholes would only encourage other countries to follow suit.

Were Australia to succeed in using carryover credits in the way it has proposed it would reduce Australia’s 2030 target from 26% to only a 14.3% reduction below 2005 emissions levels using 2018 projections (the cut is even greater under 2019 projections)

Osher Günsberg says using Kyoto carryover credits “is like telling my second wife that I washed heaps of dishes in my first marriage so I don’t have to wash any now”

Climate scientist slams Australia’s 'disgusting' performance at COP25

Australia is among a number of countries being blamed for blocking climate agreement at COP25

6) The role of deforestation.
The chart above showing percentage change in emissions between 1990-2009 showed Australia as an outlier, with 51.8% increase, more than any other country. A significant part of this was represented by deforestation, especially in Queensland.

'Queensland clears more land each year than the rest of Australia put together, and the rate at which it is destroying its vegetation is comparable with the infamous deforestation that occurs in the Brazilian Amazon. Brazil bulldozes about 0.25% of its part of the Amazon each year; Queensland clears about 0.45% of its remaining wooded areas.'

The high rate in 1990, with a reduction by 2009 was the basis of the 'overachievement' in Australia meeting its very modest goal in Kyoto 1, which got turned into the demand for 'carryover credits' in Cop25.

How Australia became one of the worst deforesters in the world.

7) The Risks of Recalcitrance.
As this blog has amply demonstrated, Australia is an outlier in a world which is increasingly anxious about climate change. Efforts to ameliorate the situation with treaties such as Kyoto and Paris have been frustrated by uncooperative responses by Australia, and to a lesser extent Brazil and the US.

This is a situation which is likely to lead to an increase in anger, aimed especially at the most recalcitrant nations, particularly ones that are vulnerable to pressure. The US is too powerful to be vulnerable to pressure. Australia is not.

When a herd is insufficiently cohesive, it is common for uncooperative members to be given a nip around the ankles, partly pour encourager les autres.

It would not be unreasonable to predict an international campaign targeting Australia and Brazil.

This media release gives an idea of its possible scale. If 631 institutional investors managing more than $37 trillion in assets decided to make an example of Australia by disinvesting from our ten 'carbon majors', or even more widely, it might have catastrophic financial consequences for the country.

Sweden's central bank dumps Australian bonds over high emissions

Climate justice: UN rules Australia violated islander rights. Nature 10th October 2022.

'Why did this case succeed?

One important reason was that the Torres Strait Islanders could point to effects that they were already experiencing. That triggered an obligation for Australia to protect them against those impacts. The country was a sitting duck for this kind of case, because it is such a high emitter of greenhouse gases. And it has been so recalcitrant to act.'

8) Excellent overview of Australian Government climate policy by the Climate Council, a private group set up after Tony Abbott closed down the Climate Commission. Prominent members include Tim Flannery. Climate Cuts, Cover-ups, and Censorship.

How is Australia tackling climate change? BBC Reality Check. The article has similar conclusions to this blog. One difference is that their figures for coal exports are in tons, whereas the figures I give above are in dollars. I think the distinction is that Australia exports a lot of more valuable coking coal than Indonesia.

9) Some pessimistic views.

A school of thought is developing that it is becoming too late to make effective transitions with the power of the political and corporate forces opposing change.

Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy Prof Jem Bendell

What If We Stopped Pretending? by Jonathan Franzen
The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it.

10) Some graphs for climate change sceptics to explain.

The World Meteorological Organization's State of the Global Climate report confirms 2023 broke every single climate indicator.

Earth Was Due for Another Year of Record Warmth. But This Warm? Scientists are already busy trying to understand whether 2023’s off-the-charts heat is a sign that global warming is accelerating.

Climate scientists are in despair. The Guardian, 8th May 2024.

Australians believe there’s a climate emergency and want the country mobilised.

Results from the question ‘Australia is facing a climate change emergency and should take emergency action’. Source: The Australia Institute

Can Australia's Scott Morrison recover from the fires?

There is, of course, dispute about the degree to which the fires reflect climate change, arsonists, and Greenies preventing hazard reduction burning.

Nature. 23 January 2020
The race to decipher how climate change influenced Australia’s record fires
Researchers have started an attribution study to determine how much global warming is to blame for the blazes that have ravaged the continent.

Climate change made Australia’s devastating fire season 30% more likely. Nature.
But researchers say the result is conservative, and that weather conditions that make fires more likely will continue to worsen.

Australia reels under weather extremes of biblical proportions

Australia’s most senior former public servants and scientists reveal their anger about climate policy failure

BOM and CSIRO State of the Climate 2020 shows Australia is experiencing climate change now.

'Honour your climate commitments, Australia', signed, your Pacific neighbours. December 1, 2020

Making sense of Australia’s climate exceptionalism.

Why does Australia act as if it can ignore the climate crisis, and how long can it keep to this seemingly suicidal posture? Stephen Pascoe. Al Jazeera. 1 Jan 2021.

Australia accused of 'shamefully' holding back global action on climate change. Guardian Sat 27 Feb 2021

Australia has been accused of “shamefully doing nothing” and weighing down global action after a UN analysis found national pledges to cut greenhouses gas emissions over the next decade have barely begun to do what is necessary to tackle the climate crisis.

The assessment of emissions reduction plans submitted to the UN by the end of last year found if all were fulfilled they would cut global CO2 by only 1% by 2030, compared with 2010 levels.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has advised a 45% cut is needed over this time to limit global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

While some major economies such as Britain and the EU offered substantially increased short-term commitments late last year, others made only incremental shifts and some, including Australia, re-submitted the same targets put forward at the Paris climate conference in 2015. Further pledges are expected this year, including from the two biggest emitters, China and the US.

Wake up, Mr Morrison: Australia’s slack climate effort leaves our children 10 times more work to do. The Conversation, 17th March 2021. The authors of 'Australia’s Paris Agreement Pathways: Updating The Climate Change Authority’s 2014 Emissions Reduction Targets' discuss the report.

FINDINGS OF THE REPORT

The Climate Targets Panel has concluded:

1. To be consistent with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to well below 2°C,
Australia’s 2030 emissions reduction target must be 50% below 2005 levels. A 2035 target
would need to be 67% below 2005 levels. Net-zero emissions would need to be reached
by 2045.

2. To be consistent with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C,
Australia’s 2030 emissions reduction target must be 74% below 2005 levels, with net-zero
emissions reached by 2035.

3. A simple ‘net-zero emissions by 2050’ target for Australia is not sufficient for the Paris
Agreement goal of limiting global warming to well below 2°C (nor 1.5°C).