Australia is one of the world's largest fossil fuel (coal and gas) exporters. It's always been the case that cutting its own emissions would never be enough. We also have to cut the emissions from our fossil fuel exports.
In these tweet threads (here and here) Ketan Joshi discusses this.
On responsibility: of course the country that supplies the cause of climate disasters like bushfires and heatwaves bears some responsibility for the chain of events that follow Global accounting systems for emissions ≠ the actual, real, material moral burden of planetary heating
Even if you only assign a fraction of responsibility of the final harm to Australia as the entity that unlocked the carbon from underground initially, you end up at the same conclusion. Aus' primary contribution to planetary heating is fossil supply, not just fossil combustion.
When you pull fossil supply, yes - it does get replaced from elsewhere - but only *partially* replaced. Eg - this line from the ruling against Shell:
"If we stopped selling oil and gas, someone would just step in and sell the same!!" Again: it is SO refreshing to see this absolutely ludicrous pleading dismissed by a court. Absolutely bloody demolished.
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| [RDS = Royal Dutch Shell] |
Also: none of this modelling considers social, political, cultural benefit of removing aggressive actions of suppliers to protect and even manufacture demand for their sales ("we can't shut off overnight" etc)
Also: companies/countries that supply FFs, when incentivised to keep growing their supply to maintain eye-watering personal wealth, screw up demand-side measures, stick spanners in the works of policy and manufacture demand ("gas is transition fuellllll")
One second, fossil fuel supply companies are humble servants of the unchangeable demand of consumers, the next second they're slamming their first on the table telling us that there's no way we can change quick enough to reach ambitious climate targets.
On top of everything: massively blowing up Australia's supply of heatwave-intensifying dangerous and outdated products like coal and gas also means blowing up domestic emissions. Labor could easily fail on their weak 43% by 2030 due to this.
Coal and gas mining is responsible for more than 17% of Australia's domestic emissions, not even taking into account the emissions in exported coal and gas. There is no space for new coal and gas in an Australia heading for zero emissions.
I was curious, when I heard @AdamBandt say 'stop pouring petrol on the fire as you try to put it out' wrt climate - what's the ratio?
By my calculations for the Aus gov't: 3% putting it out, 97% pouring petrol on.
Labor's climate plans avoid 366 mtco2-e between 2023 and 2030. If all new coal and gas mines are approved and start running, they'll cause ~1,030 domestically and 11,176 overseas when the fuels are burned
Those extraction estimates are from @TheAusInstitute 's great report from last year, estimated emissions from coal and gas mine planned projects
If you ignore emissions from fuels when burned overseas, Labor's climate plans still reduce emissions less than the increase from new projects:
If you assume only a quarter of new coal and gas mining capacity is approved, the unlocked emissions still dwarf Labor's planned reductions between 2023 and 2030.
Australia's government plans to join Norway, Canada and the US in the club of quasi-progressive governments still running head first into unbridled fossil fuel extraction expansion. Hence: offsets, CCS, Safeguard loopholes etc all baked into modelling.
We're deep in the greenwashing era now - Labor's industry / carbon farming policies are specifically designed as wrap-around for corporate net zero targets and the BCA's efforts to control the climate narrative through fabricated action.
What's happening here is a full-size dump truck of petrol being poured onto the fire, while someone with a novelty child's plastic water pistol stands 50 metres away and squirts in the general direction of the blazing inferno.
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