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RUBY:

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

Greens leader Adam Bandt stood in front of TV cameras this week and announced a decision that could define the future of his party.

The Greens will support Labor’s climate policy, after winning a series of concessions, even though it means new coal and gas projects will go ahead – and it doesn’t meet the pleas of climate scientists around the world.

So what does the deal mean? Will it make a difference? And is something better than nothing?

Today, national correspondent for The Saturday Paper Mike Seccombe, on why Australia’s new climate policy is still behind the science.

It’s Wednesday, March 29.

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RUBY:

So, Mike, the Greens have now agreed to pass the Government's signature climate policy, the safeguard mechanism. Just how big a moment is this for Australian climate policy?

MIKE:

Middling big, I think you would have to say. Labor came to office promising to reduce emissions by 43% by 2030, so for a start that's generally considered inadequate by international standards and the safeguard mechanism on their figures will be responsible for about an 8% cut in emissions. So, you know, it's significant, but it's not huge.

What it will do, it will require only certain facilities, only certain industries, those that emit more than 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, or the equivalent of other gasses, at the moment of which there are about 215 to cut their emissions by 4.9% a year, which means a total of around 30% by 2030. So it's far from being an economy wide measure, which of course is the gold standard. So it's significant, but it's not huge and it's certainly not as good as what we had under the previous scheme by the Gillard Government at the urging of the Greens, which was an economy-wide carbon price.

And of course it comes at a crucial time. If we're to avert climate disaster, we have to reduce emissions dramatically before 2030 to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. I mean, that was the clear message from the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was released last week. And it called for much more than what the government is proposing. And it was very dire. It said this could be the world's last slim chance to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees. So getting policy right is a huge deal.

RUBY:

Okay. Well, let's talk a bit about how this actually came together then, Mike, because for a while it looked like this might not actually make it through the parliament because Labor didn't have the support of either the Coalition or the Greens. And it seemed like they might have to go back to the drawing board on this policy. So what is the Labor Government saying now about what securing this deal will mean?

Archival tape – Anthony Albanese:

“Ready to go? After a wasted decade under the Coalition, today is a very good day indeed…”

MIKE:

Well, with a great air of celebration, Albanese came out to a press conference where he announced that it was a quote, great day for the environment and for jobs and for the economy.

Archival tape – Anthony Albanese:

“But a good day as well for all those who voted for a government to take action on climate change last May.”

MIKE:

And then he was followed by the Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who'd been leading the negotiations with the Greens over the past months.

Archival tape – Chris Bowen:

“Thank you very much Prime Minister, the Albanese government gets things done.”

MIKE:

And he touted their success and proudly said that they were sticking to their policy agenda by not giving in to all the demands of the Greens.

Archival tape – Chris Bowen:

"Now we always said we'd be happy to engage with the crossbench on suggestions and amendments which were one, in keeping with our election mandate and two, in keeping with our policy agenda and the things that I'm announcing today meet both of those tests."

MIKE:

Now of course as he says his job is to put it all into action, but the details are complicated and controversial. What this new scheme is supposed to do, what it’s intended to do, is to make cuts from various big emitters, many of them fossil fuel projects, but also including things like steel, aluminium, cement, things like that. And how it works, big polluters are given a limit on what they're allowed to emit and then they have to progressively reduce the amount they emit.

So that's it in a nutshell. This whole scheme is highly controversial because there are some very serious questions about, for example, how much should these big polluters be allowed to rely on ACCUs to offset their emissions? Most other developed countries allow only a small proportion of emissions to be offset, like, you know, five or 10% or less. But the Albanese Government plans to allow up to 100% of emissions to be offset.

Suffice to say there's been a lot of criticism about how much wriggle room this gives the big polluters. And of course, it doesn't do what the IPCC and various other multilateral bodies say must be done, which is to stop the mining of new coal and gas. So that's been the big sticking point in negotiations between Labor and the Greens.

RUBY:

Okay. And as you say, what concessions were made? And ultimately, why did the Greens agree to back the legislation?

MIKE:

Well, after those long negotiations between Adam Bandt, the Greens leader, and Bowen in particular. You'd have to say, really, both sides needed a positive result. So, you know, on Monday, Bandt also came out and announced that it was a great achievement from his point of view.

Archival tape – Adam Bandt:

"We want to say to everyone who despairs about the future under the climate crisis and who's worried about their lives or their kids or their grandkids. You should have a spring in your step today because we have shown that it is possible to take on the coal and gas corporations and win."

MIKE:

He also, I might say, bagged the Labor Party pretty comprehensively, saying that negotiating with them was just like negotiating with the fossil fuel lobby.

Archival tape – Adam Bandt:

"Labor seems more afraid of the coal and gas corporations than climate collapse. Labor seems more afraid of Woodside than global warming."

MIKE:

Still, he claimed they'd won 13 concessions and perhaps the most significant of those being a hard cap so-called on overall emissions,

Archival tape – Adam Bandt:

"Under the new legislation, there will be a hard cap on pollution. New coal and gas projects that push emissions above that, as has been projected, including by the government, will now have to be addressed."

MIKE:

It would be against the law for emissions to go up and the minister would have to act to prevent that from happening. So if it looked like there were going to be new projects that would exceed the cap, the minister could intervene and put the kibosh on them essentially. The Greens also secured a commitment that all new coal and gas projects would have to be net zero in their operations from day one. And there were other concessions too, like a review of the integrity of the ACCUs, the carbon offsets; more money for the Powering the Regions fund to help with the energy transition; and some winding back of the subsidies to fossil fuel projects. So they did get a fair bit and Bandt's claim is that these changes would have the effect of preventing about half of the 116 proposed new coal and gas projects that are on the drawing board at the moment from going ahead. If he's right, that's a pretty significant achievement.

RUBY:

And so, that main commitment that the Greens were trying and have now failed to secure was for there to be no new coal and gas projects. And I mean that wasn't just something that the Greens pulled out of thin air, was it Mike? It's what the world's climate scientists have been calling for. They called for it again in the days before this deal was announced, didn't they, in the latest IPCC report?

MIKE:

The IPCC report was exquisitely timed given that it came in the last week of negotiations between Labor and The Greens over this policy and it was dire. I mean, the United Nations secretary general, Antonio Guterres, portrayed this report as, quoting him, a survival guide for humanity and a quote, How to Guide to Defuse the Climate Bomb. And the key part of that survival guide is that the world must immediately, immediately stop all new oil and gas projects and coal projects and any expansion of existing projects. So this, they say, is essentially humanity's last chance to stop runaway climate change.

The window is closing fast. So some very strong rhetoric and some absolutely devastating detail from the thousands of scientific studies that went into this report.

RUBY:

We’ll be back after this.

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Archival tape – Antonio Guterres:

"The climate time bomb is ticking, but today's IPCC report is a How to Guide to Defuse the climate time bomb. It is a survival guide for humanity as it shows the 1.5 degree limit is achievable."

RUBY:

So, Mike, let's talk a bit more about this exquisitely timed report from the IPCC. I mean, it was clear in what it was saying, we're approaching our final chance to avert a climate disaster. But you read through the report. Tell me about some of the details that it lays out.

MIKE:

Yes, it is a very important report. And what it set out to do was essentially to collate work done of six previous reports by the IPCC in this cycle, which is a huge undertaking. So it's the combined work of around 700 scientists, thousands and thousands of scientific studies, and it was signed off by 195 countries, including Australia.

So it's not as though it came from some flaky group that no one takes much notice of. It's a very authoritative report and it is a very disturbing read. They say that 1.5 degrees of warming is the threshold, essentially, between dire changes in the climate, some of which we've already seen, of course, and catastrophic changes.

So to get some idea, at 1.5 degrees, you might have some coral reefs left. Once you get to two degrees, you won't. At 1.5 degrees, there might be some sea ice in the Arctic in summer. At two degrees, there won't. Coastal wetlands, rainforests, water shortages around the world, famine, you name it, the sort of litany of disaster and horror just went on and on and on as you read through it.

And the other point that it made is that there are lags in these things. To give just one example, sea level rise. So if warming is restricted to 1.5 degrees, says the report, sea levels might go up less than two metres over the next 2000 years, right? So a very long time frame. If it was two degrees, they might go up six metres over thousands of years, but an increase of between two and three degrees would see a much greater sea level rise and for it to happen much more quickly because the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets would be almost completely and irreversibly gone. And in that scenario we could see seas come up 15 metres by 2300, which I know seems a long way away, but it's only a few generations. And, the point is that the decisions we're taking today will have enormous consequences for not only the environment but generations of people to come.

Archival tape – Antonio Guterres:

"Every country must be part of the solution. Demanding others move first only assures humanity comes last."

MIKE:

The thing is that the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, still held out a sliver of hope.

Archival tape – Antonio Guterres:

"This report is a clarion call to massively fast track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe. In short, our world needs climate action on all fronts, everything everywhere, all at once."

MIKE:

And he said that to limit warming to 1.5 degrees is still achievable but it would take and quoting him again, a quantum leap in climate action.

Archival tape – Antonio Guterres:

"It starts with parties immediately hitting the fast forward button on their net zero deadlines to get to global net zero by 2050."

RUBY:

Okay. So when we're talking about a quantum leap into climate action, are we talking about stopping all new oil and gas projects?

MIKE:

Well, yes. As of the end of 2020, the report notes, our emissions reduction policy promises made by the world's governments are consistent with two degrees of warming. So that's already into the catastrophic zone. And that means we need big improvements from where our policy is at the moment, and the root cause is simple. It is the burning of fossil fuels, which of course Australia has in abundance and which we persist in using in a fairly profligate way and also which we export in vast quantities to the rest of the world.

When I say we're profligate users of fossil fuels, let me just give you a statistic. In 2022, the average Australian was responsible for the emission of 18.9, almost 19 tonnes, per capita of carbon dioxide. That's according to the government's own figures. Now, this makes us among the very worst in the world. Worse than Canada, worse than the United States, worse than all of Europe. Just a few petro states in the world are as bad as we are.

Even with the kind of reductions that the government is foreshadowing, we're still going to be among the worst.

Archival tape – Antonio Guterres:

"Leaders of developed countries must commit to reaching net zero as close as possible to 2040 the limit they should all aim to respect. This can be done. Some have already set a target as early as 2035."

MIKE:

Our current policy of a 43% reduction by 2030 looks big if you compare it with the 28% target that we had under the Morrison Government. But it's well below what the IPCC and the experts say is needed.

Archival tape – Antonio Guterres:

"The acceleration agenda calls for a number of other actions, specifically no new coal and the phasing out of coal by 2030 in OECD countries and 2040 in all other countries."

MIKE:

And the IPCC is absolutely clear; all countries need to stop funding for coal and phase it out. And and we need to redirect the subsidies that now go towards fossil fuel production into the production of renewable energy.

RUBY:

But the safeguard mechanism with the Greens support, it clearly doesn't meet that, does it? I mean, at best, Adam Bandt conceded that it would really only stop half of new fossil fuel projects. So what kind of reaction are we seeing from environmental groups? How are they weighing up a policy that does take some action on climate, even if it isn't the action that the UN says is needed?

MIKE:

Well, the reaction of most environment groups, I think, is that something is better than nothing. I mean, that's the essence of it. In fact, part of the conflict in this was not between Labor and the Greens, it was between the Greens and conservation groups. It was between people who want more ambition. Bob Brown, for example, the former Greens leader, flamboyantly quit the Australian Conservation Foundation, of which he had been made a life member on the basis that they were encouraging the Greens to to wave through the government policy.

So I guess it comes down to a pragmatic decision, you know. Do you get a bit of what you want, or do you plant yourself and say, no, we're going to knock back the government's proposal. So what Bandt is saying is we've got part of the way now we just have to redouble our efforts. And I think that's where most of the conservation organisations have ended up. I would think that in a way a more significant reaction is that from the fossil fuel lobby. That gives us a good clue to how serious they think the changes are and to date, their reaction has been pretty muted. Which I think would seem to suggest that they think that what's gone through is actually pretty weak.

All I can say is, you know, something is better than nothing. And this is a fair bit better than it would have been had the Greens and various Senate crossbenchers, particularly David Pocock. managed to wrangle out of the government.

RUBY:

Sure. But at the end of the day there will be new coal and gas developments under this deal, so have the Greens departed from the science here? Are they now voting for something that won't be in line with what the IPCC is pleading for?

MIKE:

Well, clearly they are. But Bandt says the focus now is on fighting every single new coal and gas development. So despite fighting for the mechanism, the message is essentially we live to fight another day and we will continue that fight.

RUBY:

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting, though, that after an election, which, you know, was a huge climate election, there were more greens, more independents voted in than ever before. But it seems like the best we can do now is a policy that doesn't go as far as what the IPCC is calling for, is behind other countries around the world in terms of what it's promising. So is it disappointing that this is the response of our political leaders to a massive climate vote?

MIKE:

Well, I do think it's disappointing. I mean, that's my personal view. I think it's disappointing. But I think the bigger picture here is where the electorate is, right. Because as you say, at the last election, we saw more Greens in the parliament than ever before. We saw a raft of climate focussed independents into the parliament, too. I might add, we've seen something similar at the recent New South Wales election, notwithstanding the fact that New South Wales was pretty good on climate.

So, you know, I really think that the Coalition parties here are absolutely marginalised, right? The game now is between Labor and parties more progressive than Labor. And I really think that unless Labor starts lifting its game a bit, they’re just going to see more and more votes bleed away to those other parties. So apart from the fact that it's good for the planet to do more, I think the Labor Party will ultimately find out that it's good for the Labor Party to do more as well.

RUBY:

Mike, thank you so much for your time.

MIKE:

Thank you.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

Oliver Schulz, 41, has been granted bail after becoming the first Australian to be arrested and charged with the war crime of murder. Schultz, a former SAS soldier, is accused of gunning down an unarmed Afghan man in 2012. A trial is unlikely to begin until 2024 or 2025.

And,

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has delayed the contentious judicial overhaul plan that brought tens of thousands of protestors onto the streets over the weekend. The plan would allow the government to control the body responsible for electing judges, and would authorise parliament to override decisions of the Supreme Court.

Opponents have called the reforms a threat to civil society and judicial independence, with Netanyahu still facing a corruption trial which he’s described as a ‘witch hunt’.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am, see you tomorrow.

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