PM’s climate fund fallacy.

It is the mantra Prime Minister Scott Morrison intones endlessly when the subject of Australia’s response to climate change arises. We will meet our international greenhouse gas reduction agreements, he says, “in a canter”.

Tim Baxter from the Climate
and Energy  College at the
University of Melbourne.

Whenever official data comes out, showing Australia’s emissions have again increased, as they have consistently under this government, Morrison insists we will meet our Paris target of a 26 to 28 per cent reduction, compared with 2005, by the year 2030 – “in a canter”.

When the climate scientists of the United Nations issue a report, as they did last December, bluntly stating “there has been no improvement in Australia’s climate policy since 2017 and emission levels for 2030 are projected to be well above the target”, he blithely dismisses it.

When credible numbers are released by forecasters suggesting Australia will fall way short of its Paris target – Ndevr Environmental’s work of last December showing we will miss the target by a cumulative 1.1 billion tonnes of emissions, to cite just one – Morrison responds with the old mantra.

Until this week, he never gave detail of how it might be done. He just endlessly repeated the simple assurance – we will meet our targets “in a canter”.

Read the story from The Saturday Paper why Michael Seccombe - “PM’s climate fund fallacy.”