In an earlier article ( The Four Reports of the Climate Apocalypse? ) I reviewed four reports relating to climate change which were issued in November 2012. Taken together, those reports painted a picture of a world which was a long way from achieving the internationally agreed goal of limiting warming to 2 °C. All of you who read my earlier article and were concerned – perhaps even alarmed – please read on, because I am about to tell you about an opportunity for you to have your say about Australia’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Anyone who opposes taking effective action, please cease reading at this point.
The review of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets is being done by the Climate Change Authority, a body set up in the same legislative package which introduced the carbon price. The Climate Change Authority is required by its Act to review Australia’s emissions reduction target for 2020 and to complete and report on that review by 28th February 2014. The Authority (which calls the review the “Caps and Targets Review”) has issued an Issues Paper on the review ( available here ) and has called for public submissions by 30th May, 2013. More information on the review is available ( here ), which also has information about how to make a submission.
There is a lot of information in the Issues Paper, some of it technical detail about “reduction trajectories”, “covered and uncovered emissions”, etc. When reading the Issues Paper, it is tempting to let the eyes glaze over and to decide it’s all too complex, perhaps best left to the experts. Please don’t succumb to that temptation: my intention in this article is to let people know about this opportunity to make a submission and to make some initial points about the review which I hope will help you get started on your submission.
What’s missing?
There is a vital ingredient missing from the Issues Paper: urgency. After reading the paper one is left with the impression that controlling climate change is an interesting intellectual and philosophical challenge which we can ponder over, argue about and tinker with over the next few decades as we exquisitely calibrate our reduction efforts to be no faster than anyone else’s, regardless of how inadequate their efforts are. So, if you are moved to make a submission – and I hope many people are – then please at least decry the lack of urgency and call for vastly increased efforts to reduce Australia’s emissions.
Emissions Budgets.
The Act requires the Climate Change Authority to include emissions budgets in their considerations and the Authority say they would like to hear what people think about an approach based on an emissions budget. An emissions budget is a total amount of greenhouse gas emissions (typically measured in billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) that humanity can pump into our planet’s atmosphere before some set amount of warming is triggered. Typically, such budgets are expressed as emissions from about now to 2050 (and beyond) to avoid more than 2 °C of warming. However, there is some uncertainty about what level of emissions will cause how much warming, which leads to information such as Table 1, taken from page 18 of the Issues Paper.
I have added the second column; this information is actually identical to the information in the first column, but I have expressed it as the risk of exceeding the 2 °C limit at the stated emissions level, as this way of expressing a probability may be more relevant to some readers.
So to make it quite clear: if we would like the risk of exceeding 2 °C to be no more than a 1 in 5 chance that it will, then we will need to reduce our net emissions of all greenhouse gases to zero – worldwide – in about 10 years from now.
The Climate Change Authority has asked for views on the appropriate budget for Australia’s caps and targets. My suggestion is to push for the 67% budget, as I think it is too late to achieve the 80% case, and because I am deeply uneasy about accepting a fifty-fifty chance the target is overshot.
It currently looks highly likely that the Climate Change Authority’s recommendations on Australia’s emissions reduction targets will be made to a government lead by Tony Abbott. Clearly, convincing the Climate Change Authority to recommend much more ambitious targets will not guarantee any improvement in the Australian Government’s position. However, a strong recommendation from the Climate Change Authority will at least potentially embarrass the government and may help persuade people like Malcolm Turnbull to take a stronger stance within their own party.
Please make a submission!
*David Hamilton is a semi-retired physicist, energy consultant and tree grower who moved to northern Tasmania in 2009 and has not regretted it for a moment. He can be followed on Twitter at @DavidHTassie
