According to an analysis by policymakers and scientists Australia will effectively be abandoning the United Nations sponsored Paris Agreement unless it makes at least a 50 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and reaches net zero well before 2050.
The report a new group called the Climate Targets Panel found Australia’s conservative Liberal-National government should be setting a 2030 emissions reduction target of between 50 per cent and 74 per cent if Australia was to comply with goals of limiting global heating to two degrees Celsius and 1.5°C respectively.
Guardian Australia reports both would be a significant increase on the government’s existing target of a 26 to 28 per cent cut compared with 2005 levels, and the 45 per cent goal the opposition Labor Party took to the last election.
The panel, consisting of the former Liberal Party leader Dr John Hewson and scientists Professor Will Steffen, Dr Lesley Hughes and Malte Meinshausen, said it employed the same carbon budget methodology as the Climate Change Authority used in a 2014 report that advised the government of then Prime Minister Tony Abbott on targets.
Dr Hewson said it found Australia would have to effectively double its 2030 target to play its part in meeting the Paris Agreement goals, expressed as holding the average global temperature increase since pre-industrial times to well below 2.0°C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C.
He said decisions on climate targets were being driven by political expediency, not science.
That included the push for a target of net-zero emissions by 2050, which the government of the Prime Minister Scott Morrison has so far resisted despite calls from international leaders, the scientific community, major business groups, the opposition and state governments.
The panel found Australia’s fair share to hold global heating to below 2.0°C would be to reach net-zero emissions by 2045.
It said interim targets would need to be a 50 per cent cut by 2030, 67 per cent by 2035 and 84 per cent by 2040.
Limiting heating to 1.5°C would require a 74 per cent cut by 2030 leading to net-zero emissions by 2035.
“Anything less than a 50 per cent cut on 2005 levels by 2030 is abandoning the Paris Agreement,” Dr Hewson told Guardian Australia.
The global research body Climate Analytics looked at the same question last year and found Australia should be making a 66 per cent cut below 2005 levels by 2030 on the path to net zero by 2050.
That report suggested decarbonising the energy system could create 76,000 jobs in the renewables sector alone.
Pressure on countries to increase climate targets, including commitments for 2030, is expected to increase this year.
In the United States, the new president, Joe Biden, has reset a goal of power generation in the US being carbon-free by 2035 and is expected to announce a 2030 target ahead of the November UN climate conference in Glasgow.
Britain and the European Union late last year announced new emissions reduction targets for 2030 of 68 per cent and 55 per cent, compared with 1990 levels, respectively.
However, Mr Morrison has indicated he does not plan to announce a new 2030 or 2035 target for Australia this year, and the Liberal-National government is engaged in an internal political argument over the Nationals’ desire for the government to financially support a new coal-fired power station.
Climate Targets Panel member Professor Steffen, an Australian National University professor and climate councillor, said the analysis showed the climate crisis was far more urgent than many people realised.
“We certainly can’t afford to push climate action out to 2050,” he said.
The carbon budget approach involves estimating the total amount Australia could reasonably emit before reaching net zero under a global climate deal in which every country played their part.
The panel used the budgets to calculate targets using “straight-line trajectories”, drawing a straight-line from 2020 to the point at which the national budget ran out and the country would be at net-zero emissions.
It found if Australia aimed to reach net zero emissions by 2050, a mark supported by more than 120 countries, it would have used up its entire emissions budget well before mid-century.
An analysis by ClimateWorks Australia last year found the falling cost of technology suggested the country could reach net-zero emissions by 2035 if governments directed stimulus spending to climate solutions.
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