THE CONVERSATION
Mr MORRISON, PLEASE DON’T MAKE EMPTY PROMISES Enshrine our climate targets in law By Tim Stephens IN THE LEAD-UP to this year’s United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, the Morrison government is inching towards adopting a net-zero emissions target for 2050. If Prime Minister Scott Morrison can resist internal party pressure to exempt some sectors from the commitment, the target would be welcome. It would also bring Australia into line with its international peers. More than 120 other governments have made similar pledges, including China, the European Union and the United States. However, Morrison is reportedly considering making the target voluntary, rather than legally binding. That would mean the policy could circumvent parliament and Coalition backbenchers averse to climate action could not vote against it. But if that happens, the commitment is likely to be meaningless. As recent political history shows, emissions reduction targets must be enshrined in law if we’re to have any hope of reaching them.
The value of a good law A well-designed climate law can achieve two main goals: ensuring Australia meets and beats its emissions targets, and that those targets are consistent with the best available science. In 2012, the Gillard Labor government passed a comprehensive climate law known as the Clean Energy Act. The legislation underpinned Labor’s carbon price scheme, which was famously repealed by the Abbott government in 2014. The law was unusual in setting a fixed carbon price rather than an emissions target, but over time the policy would have met the goals set out above. The laws were only in place for a few years, but quickly began working to bring down emissions. This is because businesses, in particular the electricity sector, faced mandatory financial costs if they failed to comply. When the law was abolished, Australia also lost much of the institutional infrastructure needed to drive emissions down. For example, the Climate Change Authority – while surviving the Abbott government’s effort to scrap it – lost its central role in advising on carbon budgets and emissions targets. Australia now has no national mechanism to put a legally binding cap on emissions. Instead, we have a hodgepodge of voluntary schemes and incentive mechanisms. These include the Climate Solutions Fund (formerly the Emissions Reduction Fund), under which the government pays polluters to cut their emissions, and the Technology Investment Roadmap.
Australia’s Emissions Projections, December 2020 (Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources.) The Emissions Reduction Fund has had modest impact. But as Australian National University environmental economist Frank Jotzo has noted, it’s “vastly less effective and efficient” than the carbon pricing mechanism it replaced. Without a legally binding target, climate action becomes voluntary. The federal government cannot compel industry and others to reduce their emissions, and itself is not held to account. As the Australian experience over the past 15 years has shown, the lack of a legal imperative means climate policy goes nowhere. Arguments about emissions reduction become mired in internal party bickering and parliamentary paralysis, and vested fossil fuel interests continue to profit while damaging the planet. Emissions reduction, if not set into law, can get bogged down in internal party politics.
Steggall on the right track Independent Warringah MP Zali Steggall recently stepped into the climate policy vacuum. Her Climate Change Bill, currently the subject of a parliamentary inquiry, is supported by both the business sector and environment groups.
IMAGE: SOPHIE LOWDEN
“As recent political history shows, emissions reduction targets must be enshrined in law if we’re to have any hope of reaching them.”
