Scott Morrison will be praying for a Trump win: they see eye-to-eye on doing nothing about climate change
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Scott Morrison is yearning for a Donald Trump victory The PM will be praying for a Republican win in the US to back up his inaction on climate and the Paris Agreement. The Age, Kevin Rudd 8 Sept 20, A year out from Barack Obama’s election in 2008, John Howard made a stunning admission that he thought Americans should be praying for a Republican victory. Ideologically this was unremarkable. But the fact Howard said so publicly was because he knew just how uncomfortable an Obama victory would be for him given his refusal to withdraw our troops from Iraq.Fast forward more than a decade, and Scott Morrison – even in the era of Donald Trump – will also be yearning desperately for a Republican victory come November. But this time it is the conservative recalcitrance on a very different issue that risks Australia being isolated on the world stage: climate change.
And as the next summer approaches, Australians will be reminded afresh of how climate change, and its impact on our country and economy, has not gone away. Former vice-president Joe Biden has put at the centre of his campaign a historic plan to fight climate change both at home and abroad. On his first day in office, he has promised to return the US to the Paris Agreement. And he recently unveiled an unprecedented $2 trillion green investment plan, including the complete decarbonisation of the domestic electricity system by 2035. By contrast, Morrison remains hell-bent on Australia doing its best to disrupt global momentum to tackle the climate crisis and burying our head in the sand when it comes to embracing the new economic opportunities that come with effective climate change action. As a result, if Biden is elected this November, we will be on track for a collision course with our American ally in a number of areas. First, Morrison remains recklessly determined on being able to carry over so-called “credits” from the overachievement of our 2020 Kyoto target to help it meet its already lacklustre 2030 target under the new Paris regime. No other government in the world is digging their heels in like this. None. It is nothing more than an accounting trick to allow Australia to do less. Perhaps the greatest irony is that this “overachievement” was also in large part because of the mitigation actions of our government. That aside, these carbon credits also do nothing for the atmosphere. At worst, using them beyond 2020 could be considered illegal and only opens the back door for other countries to also do less by following Morrison’s lead.
This will come to a head at the next UN climate talks in Glasgow next year. While Australia has thus far been able to dig in against objections by most of the rest of the world, a Biden victory would only strengthen the hand of the UK hosts to simply ride over the top of any further Australian intransigence. Morrison would be foolhardy to believe that Boris Johnson’s government will burn its political capital at home and abroad to defend the indefensible Australian position. Second, unlike 114 countries around the world, Morrison remains hell-bent on ignoring the central promise of Paris: that all governments increase their 2030 targets by the time they get to Glasgow. That’s because even if all those commitments were fully implemented, it would only give the planet one-third of what is necessary to keep average temperature increases within 1.5 degrees by 2100, as the Paris Agreement requires. This is why governments agreed to increase their ambition every five years as technologies improved, costs lowered and political momentum built……… Under Trump, Morrison has been able to get one giant leave pass for doing nothing on climate. But under Biden, he’ll be seen as nothing more than the climate change free-loader that he is. As he will by the rest of the world. And our economy will be punished as a result. https://www.theage.com.au/world/north-america/scott-morrison-is-yearning-for-a-donald-trump-victory-20200906-p55sxe.html |
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