The Guardian, 19 June 2021:
On Thursday morning, shortly after the resources minister, Keith Pitt, finished his “net zero by 2050: not on your nelly” sortie on the ABC, the governor of the reserve bank, Philip Lowe, touched down in Queensland Nationals country.
Lowe went to Toowoomba to deliver a keynote address at the Australian Farm Institute conference. The speech was principally about household debt, house prices and whether Australians could ever expect a pay rise. But during the questions that followed the presentation, the RBA governor was asked about decarbonisation in the agriculture sector.
Lowe told the conference he was often up late, participating in the international meetings that central bank governors participate in “and a very frequent question that comes up in those meetings is ‘what is Australian business doing to decarbonise?’”.
It is worth letting Lowe explain. “Many international investors are very focused on this issue and it’s particularly important for the agricultural sector because up to 70% of agricultural output in Australia gets exported – so you are relying on overseas markets, and increasingly overseas investors are asking about the carbon content of production, and that is a trend that is only going to continue,” the central bank governor said.
“So agriculture has tremendous opportunities here, but we need to find ways to disclose to global investors and global customers the decarbonisation strategy and how successfully we are doing that.
“It is a really important issue and it’s going to become more important.”
Lowe inhabits a universe where climate change is real, the science is settled, and global capital has already made its choice.
If you inhabit that world, there’s very little grey area. You can see that transformation is coming. You can see countries are now in a race to prosper in what Scott Morrison now likes to call the “new energy economy”.
That race is only intensifying.
Over the past couple of months, the International Energy Agency has said fossil fuel expansion must end now if the planet is to address the climate crisis; there has been a G7 declaration (with Morrison in attendance) that public financing of unabated coal-fired power must stop this year and a pledge that net zero emissions must be achieved by 2050 “at the latest”; Joe Biden, Yoshihide Suga and Justin Trudeau have pledged much deeper cuts in emissions by 2030; and Boris Johnson says climate action is Britain’s top priority and the UK will deliver a 78% emissions cut by 2035 compared with 1990.
In which the Nationals defend the mining industry against a dreaded national “zero emissions” policy being established
The Guardian, 17 June 2021:
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| The resources minister, Keith Pitt, believes the National party would be ‘unsupportive’ of any commitment to net zero emissions. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP |
The resources minister, Keith Pitt, has fired a warning shot at Scott Morrison, declaring he cannot adopt a policy of net zero emissions by 2050 without the backing of the Nationals.
Morrison has been trying to telegraph a pivot on climate policy since the election of Joe Biden as the US president, signalling Australia wants to achieve net zero as soon as possible and “preferably” by 2050.
The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, wants Australia to unveil more ambitious commitments before the UN’s climate change summit in Glasgow in November, and he maximised Morrison’s comments in London this week by saying Australia had already “declared for net zero”.
Morrison is facing pressure from metropolitan Liberals to make the mid-century commitment, as well as sustained pressure from his global peers to do more to reduce emissions sooner.
The Australian prime minister was at the G7 summit in Cornwall last weekend as leaders committed “to ambitious and accelerated efforts to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and by 2050 at the latest, recognising the importance of significant action this decade”.
But a number of National party figures have been signalling for months they are not on board with Morrison’s climate change shift.
Pitt’s clear public warning shot on Thursday, in the wake of the G7 commitments and Johnson’s quip in London, is significant because the Queensland National is a member of the cabinet.
The resources minister said Australia’s climate policy – currently devoid of an official mid-century commitment – had not changed.
“We have not committed to net zero by 2050,” Pitt told the ABC. “That would require the agreement of the Nationals and that agreement has not been reached or sought.”
Asked for his own view, Pitt said: “It is all about the cost and who is paying.”
He said committing to net zero emissions by 2050 would “absolutely cause damage in regional communities” given those communities were reliant on export income from fossil fuels…….
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