Antinuclear

Scott Morrison’s missing target: climate  https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/scott-morrison-s-missing-climate-target-20200203-p53x5g  

If he is going to appease noisy climate change denialists, it would be better if the Prime Minister left emissions reduction policy to the states.  Richard Denniss Columnist  Scott Morrison loves long-run targets for everything except climate policy.The federal government has long-run targets for inflation (2 to 3 per cent), the budget surplus (1 per cent of gross domestic product) and net debt (zero).

It’s got a long-run target for defence spending (2 per cent of GDP) and countless long-run targets when it comes to Indigenous disadvantage, education performance, aged care quality and foreign aid.

But when it comes to reducing the amount of coal, oil and gas Australia burns, apparently long-run targets are an unnecessary distraction for an “action man” like Scotty from Marketing.

Targets give business, consumers and other levels of government something clear to work towards. Energy sources, especially the coal and nuclear power stations that the Prime Minister likes the sound of, take years to plan, years to build and decades to pay for themselves.

Targets give business more certainty but they also make governments accountable for performance, which is presumably why the Prime Minister is so determined to avoid them when it comes to carbon emissions.

In his sermon to the National Press Club last week, he avoided committing to net zero emissions by 2050 on the basis that his “climate action agenda is a practical one, it goes beyond targets and summits”. But you can’t go “beyond” long-run targets without having first set them.

The PM’s real problem with long-run climate targets is the long-run climate change deniers in the party he’s trying to lead.

Morrison knows targets matter. That’s why his government targeted so many sports grants to marginal electorates, and it’s why he spends so much time talking about meeting and beating Tony Abbott’s 26 to 28 per cent Paris target.

Scott knows that if you set the bar low enough you can easily clear it, and if you don’t set the bar at all you can do nothing at all. After six years in office, continuing to avoid long-run emissions targets makes the government’s job easier and the energy industry’s harder.

The Prime Minister’s real problem with long-run climate targets is the long-run climate change deniers in the party he’s trying to lead.

For 10 years the only way for a Liberal leader to survive has been to publicly promise to do something about climate change while privately promising not to. Morrison waved a lump of coal in Parliament when he wanted to destabilise Malcolm Turnbull, but today he waves his “climate action now” slogan to stabilise his slide in the polls.

Ultimately, like the last five Liberal leaders, he will be impaled on the fence his party insists he sit on.

Morrison’s new-found interest in hazard reduction is no substitute for spending his prime ministerial capital in international forums, trying to steer the world away from the 3 degrees of warning we are currently on track to experience. The state premiers are perfectly capable of raking the leaves, but only the federal government can negotiate on the nation’s behalf for more ambitious action.

Which brings me back to targets. Back in 2016, the ACT set a target to source 100 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, and it’s already “meeting and beating” that goal and providing some of the cheapest electricity in Australia. The City of Sydney will be 100 per cent renewable by the end of this year and the state Coalition government of Gladys Berejiklian has committed NSW to net-zero emissions by 2050.

In fact, every state in Australia is committed to carbon neutrality by 2050 – which, whether Scott Morrison likes it or not, means that Australia has committed to being carbon neutral by 2050. But rather than using those targets as leverage on the international stage, Morrison is undermining them on the domestic stage.

If the Prime Minister was as interested in appeasing the quiet Australians as he was in appeasing the noisy climate denialists, he would welcome the bear hug the state premiers have wrapped him in and take credit for their ambition on the world stage while holding the premiers to account for their commitments back home.

While a national approach to emissions reduction would be nice, the federal Coalition has shredded every initiative that has been put forward. Rather than take over more responsibilities from the states, Morrison would do better to leave climate and energy policy to them. The only thing stopping him from showing up at the next global climate talks and putting the states’ target of net zero by 2050 on the table is his backbench.