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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

Right now, world leaders are gearing up for COP26: a major international climate summit starting in just a few days.

The summit has been billed as humanity’s last chance to avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change.

But while many developed nations are preparing to commit to strong emissions reduction targets, Australia remains an outlier.

Today, national correspondent for The Saturday Paper Mike Seccombe on why COP26 is so important, and how Australia might undermine global efforts to stop runaway climate change.

It’s Thursday, October 28.

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RUBY:

Mike, on Sunday, 197 countries will come together in Glasgow, Scotland, for an international climate summit known as COP 26. What is the goal? What are we all trying to achieve?

MIKE:

Well, the main aim of the conference is to see the countries of the world commit to ambitious new climate action targets, with the aim of reaching zero carbon emissions by the middle of the century. And the hope is that by setting targets, the heating of the planet will be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a target that will avoid what they say would be catastrophic climate change otherwise.

So, you know, the slogan is 1.5 stay alive.

And while they've been climate summits before, Glasgow is being seen as a watershed event. The reason for that is the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report, which basically puts all the science together and said that this is really code red. This is our last chance to stop runaway climate change.

RUBY:

Mm so it's our last chance, but it is the 26th version of this climate summit. It's all in the name COP26. Can you tell me about how it all started? How did the international community initially come together to try and begin to tackle climate change?

MIKE:

Well, it goes back almost 30 years, actually. That's how long we've been trying to get people together on this.
The story begins with the UN sponsored Rio Earth Summit in 1992...

Archival tape -- Serven Suzuki:

“Hello, I'm Severn Suzuki speaking for ECO, the Environmental Children's Organisation, we’re a group of 12 and 13-year-olds trying to make a difference.”

MIKE:

...Which recognised that greenhouse gases generated by human activity, you know, mainly the burning of coal, oil and gas were changing the climate and that it was a global problem and in need of a coordinated global response.

Archival tape -- Serven Suzuki:

“Do not forget why you were attending these conferences. Who you're doing this for? We are your own children.”

MIKE:

That conference set up the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. And after that, the UN began holding regular meetings of the world's nations, called conferences of parties or cops for short.

Archival tape -- Kofi Annan:

“Dear friends, today we celebrate the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol.”

MIKE:

The first really significant cop was actually the third one in Kyoto in 1997.

Archival tape -- Kofi Annan:

“This is the great stride forward in our struggle to confront one of the biggest challenges we face in the 21st century climate change.”

MIKE:

And that was where countries first agreed to specific emissions reduction targets.

Archival tape -- Kofi Annan:

“From now on, industrialised countries that are party to the protocol have a clear obligation to reduce emissions.”

MIKE:

And since then, it's been an agonisingly slow process of trying to get agreement between nations to lift their efforts.
The Kyoto summit was also the moment where Australia started to flex its international diplomatic muscle, but not necessarily always in a good way.

RUBY:

OK, so tell me about that, Mike. What happened at Kyoto and what role did Australia play?

MIKE:

Well, so John Howard was the prime minister at the time and the Environment Minister Robert Hill attended.

Archival tape -- Robert Hill:

“A solution that comes out of Kyoto that restrains economic development, isn’t to my mind, going to be a good environmental outcome.”

MIKE:

And the outcome was Australia managed to get away with promising very, very little.

Archival tape -- Robert Hill:

“It’s not a target as such, it’s a calculation of what we can achieve on a comprehensive basis: less land use.”

MIKE:

Australia actually managed to negotiate a position that allowed us to increase our emissions by eight per cent.
And then even after negotiating this exceptionally unambitious target, Howard refused to ratify Kyoto.

Archival tape -- John Howard:

“Let’s understand what's happening here, you've got the spokesman for a group of countries lecturing us about not having signed Kyoto yet the great bulk of the countries on his behalf, he speaks, are falling well behind their Kyoto targets.”

MIKE:

That didn't happen until after the election of the Labor government under Kevin Rudd in 2007. You'll recall that Rudd campaigned hard on climate and the environment, and he called climate change the great moral challenge of our generation.

Archival tape -- Kevin Rudd:

“I'd like to stand and formally hand to you the instrument of ratification on behalf of the Commonwealth of Australia to the Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations framework on climate change.”

MIKE:

And of course, then came the shambles of Copenhagen.

RUBY:

Right, so what went wrong at Copenhagen?

MIKE:

Well, hopes were very high ahead of Copenhagen in 2009. But in the end, it was a failure. Much of the blame for this was attributed to China. Kevin Rudd certainly blamed them. He went to the conference and at one stage was heard saying of the Chinese quote those Chinese fuckers trying to rat, fuck us. So he clearly wasn't happy.

You know, essentially, Rudd failed in his efforts to negotiate with the international community, his perceived failure and then all the internal Labour tensions over the leadership. All this contributed to his demise. You know, he lost the leadership. His successor, Julia Gillard, attempted to pick up the baton. She implemented a price on carbon.
But that was ruthlessly attacked by the coalition under the new opposition leader Tony Abbott, who was of the view and has expressed the view that climate change was quote crap unquote.

By the time of the next meeting in Paris, Abbott had been replaced by Malcolm Turnbull, who strongly believed in the urgency of responding to climate change, and America, of course, had Barack Obama as president, who also strongly believed in the need to respond to climate change. So, so the mood had changed somewhat.

RUBY:

Hmm So by the time of the Paris summit, then there was much more of a political mood to do something tangible on climate change. Can you tell me about the outcome of that meeting about the Paris Agreement?

MIKE:

The Paris summit in 2015 was much more productive as as I might say it needed to be, because by that stage, there was further scientific evidence showing that climate change was happening much faster than previously thought. So anyway, countries set themselves new targets in Australia's case. That was 26 to 28 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030, and that was similar to the pledge made by the United States.

So the Paris accord provided that these targets would be reassessed and firmed up after five years. So the international community was moving. But Australia hasn't moved so much. Malcolm Turnbull was dumped in large part because of his position on climate and what we signed up to in Paris.

And now, six years on from Paris should have been five. But Cop was delayed a year by Covid.

Countries are meeting again to announce what they will do next and how much further they should be cutting emissions and in particular, the focus this time on what can be done between now and 2030.

And so while Scott Morrison says he believes in climate change and will go there agreeing to net zero by 2050.

Archival tape -- Scott Morrison:

“So I'll be taking this plan to COP26. For our target to achieve net zero by 2050.”

MIKE:

He owes his job to the climate sceptics, mostly in the National Party.

Archival tape -- Scott Morrison:

“If you want to protect lives and livelihoods as we have three Covid, you want to protect livelihoods in the way of life of Australians, particularly in rural and regional areas. Then you want a plan that has been developed by people like in the Liberals and the Nationals.”

MIKE:

But he won't do anything about the all important 2030 target.

And so again, Australia looks set to be a laggard in this year's COP in Glasgow.

Archival tape -- Scott Morrison:

And there'll be other countries that turn up in Glasgow and they'll say they have targets and I say they have ambitions. But you won't find the same plan.

RUBY:

We’ll be back after this.

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RUBY:

Mike, we've been talking about Australia's role at cops climate summits past and pending. I want to ask you as well, though, about the commitments that other countries are bringing to Glasgow this year. Are we seeing more ambitious proposals globally and and will what's being considered be enough to stave off runaway climate change?

MIKE:

Yes, we are seeing much more ambitious targets.

The Biden administration has committed to halve its emissions by 2030.

Archival tape -- Joe Biden:

“The US sets out on the road to cut greenhouse gases in half. In half by the end of this decade.”

MIKE:

The Canadians are talking 40 to 45 percent.

Archival tape -- Justin Trudeau:

“Our new climate target for 2030 is to reduce our 2005 emission levels by 40 to 45%.”

MIKE:

The European Union has adopted 55 per cent.

Archival tape -- Pascal Canfin:

“2030 target will go above -55 to above -57.”

MIKE:

The UK 68 per cent by 2030.

Archival tape -- Boris Johnson:

“We in the UK are going to lead by example, 68% by 2030.”

MIKE:

Japan is pledging 46 per cent, Korea 40 per cent. The list goes on.

But a lot of countries have have really stepped up their ambitions.

In part I might add, because it's now realised that renewable energy is actually the cheaper way to go. So there's an economic as well as a climate case here. So Australia is very much the outlier amongst developed nations.

RUBY:

Right. And so we know that Australia, under Prime Minister Scott Morrison, is going to this summit with an agreement to get to net zero by 2050. How is that likely to be received, Mike? And what sort of pressure are we going to receive from other countries who have committed to more ambitious targets?

MIKE:

Well, I would suggest it'll probably be very poorly received.

We've already seen pressure from the US and Britain for Australia to do better. Biden's climate envoy, John Kerry, for example, specifically called Australia out over its efforts to use so-called carbon credits. The prime minister of the UK, Boris Johnson, pressed Morrison quite directly to increase Australia's ambition during a phone call I had back in August. We've had most of the islands of the Pacific have been very publicly and privately critical of Australia's inactivity, and it's easy to see why.

I mean, you have to bear in mind here that Australia's per capita emissions are amongst the highest of any country. They're twice those of the people in China, for example, eight times those of the people in India.

So, you know, you can see why they would be a bit cranky. You know, why should they aspire to do better when a rich country like Australia doesn't? And of course, why would other developed nations which are kicking in something like $100 billion to the Green Climate Fund to help poor countries develop renewables, a fund that Australia has now pulled out of under Morrison, why would they not be cranky with us when Australia instead is underwriting fossil fuel developments overseas?

So, yeah, Australia is very much an outlier and and I don't think we will be terribly well-received.

RUBY:

Hmm. And so, Mike, when you take a step back and consider the situation, it seems like that for the past 26 years, the rest of the world has become better at committing to strong targets and to taking action on climate change. But Australia has in the past lagged behind and continues to do so to this day. So why has that happened? What is it about Australia?

MIKE:

Well the big thing here, of course, is that we are such a fossil fuel economy. We rank third in the world behind Russia and Saudi Arabia as a fossil fuel exporter and the ambition of both major parties, not not just the coalition, but also labor is to continue to mine and export ever more fossil fuels. You know, gas and coal in particular.

The fossil fuel lobby is very powerful in this country. You know, the old country party that used to represent farmers is now the National Party, and it basically represents miners. Coal and gas interests are huge political donors, and there is a revolving door between the industry and government and it keeps spinning.

RUBY:

And so given all of that, how optimistic do you think that we should be about these negotiations in Glasgow? Does it seem likely to you that an agreement will be reached that will limit the warming of the planet to 1.5 degrees?

MIKE:

Well in general, I'm slightly optimistic, actually.

RUBY:

That's nice to hear! [laughs]

MIKE:

[Laughs] Well, about the rest of the world, if not Australia. The latest figures from the scientific research group Carbon Action Tracker show some pretty fair reductions in emissions.

You know, in 2014, before Paris, their data showed the world was on course to hit four degrees of warming by 2100, which would have been catastrophic post Paris as a result of actions taken, their best estimate is that warming will be 2.9 degrees.

And assuming that countries stick to the reductions pledges that have been made in anticipation of Glasgow global heating would be in the range of 2 to 2.4 degrees.

So that's still a long way off the 1.5 degrees that we need to achieve. But the curve is bending, you know, and to make it happen, all countries need to do their bit.

The tragedy is that the Australian government at the moment just does not seem prepared to do its bit.

RUBY:

Mike, thank you so much for your time.

MIKE:

Thank you for having me.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

The Therapeutic Goods Administration has given approval for fully vaccinated people to receive a third booster dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine.

Federal health minister Greg Hunt said on Wednesday that the government hopes to commence the booster program in early November.

And the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption has heard evidence that former MP Daryl Maguire "had the ear" of former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian.

The corruption watchdog was told Berejiklian's office took specific interest in a $5.5 million dollar grant proposal in Maguire’s electorate of Wagga Wagga.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am, See you tomorrow!