Six months out from the state election and NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet adds a new dimension to the term 'city-centric'

 

The Daily Telegraph, 8 September 2022, p.5:

NSW will be a thriving economy of six cities with fast rail, ambitious affordable-housing targets, more apartments and townhouses, and more defence and space jobs under a bold new plan from Premier Dominic Perrottet.

The state government and the Greater Sydney Commission will today unveil a discussion paper on the six-city plan – which includes Lower Hunter and Greater Newcastle City, Central Coast City, Illawarra-Shoalhaven City, Western Parkland City with the new Western Sydney International Airport at its centre, as well as the Central River City and Eastern Harbour City.

Map of the one and only newly created 'region' NSW Premier & Liberal MP for Epping Dominic Perrottet and Minister for Cities & Liberal MP for Pittwater Rob Stokes apparently care about.....

Six Cities Discussion Paper Mapping

NSW Greater Cities Commission, The Six Cities Region: Delivering global competitiveness and local liveability, September 2022, excerpts from the Discussion Paper's 68 pages:

• We are actively and effectively managing climate vulnerability, proactive climate proofing, urban heat and planning, and designing our built environments to withstand flooding, bushfires and coastal erosion.

• As we grow, we must ensure our region strengthens its resilience in the face of the increasing climate-related risks and natural hazards of drought, bushfire, floods, extreme heat and overexposure to UV radiation that are already impacting our communities. This is embodied in the objectives and priority actions set out in the NSW Climate Change Adaptation Strategy.

• The 2019–2020 bushfires across eastern Australia caused loss of life, property, infrastructure and devastating impact on communities, vegetation, wildlife and ecosystems across our region. There were additional health and economic impacts from the thick smoke blanketing the region for months.

  In early 2020, major flooding impacted parts of Greater Sydney, the Central Coast City and the Illawarra-Shoalhaven City. Floods returned to parts of the region in late 2020, 2021 and 2022, causing more devastation, disruption and landslips.

  
  

One might be forgiven for thinking that the Perrottet Government has its sights squarely fixed on those zones where the bulk of the state population (therefore the bulk of registered voters) are to be found. That it is the issues, concerns and aspirations of voters living between the Illawarra-Shoalhaven and Newcastle-Upper Hunter which matter most when it comes to planning and implementing climate change mitigation, resilience measures and urban design & development. 

Seemingly wider regional New South Wales and its high climate risk communities will only get noticed between now and the March 2023 state election if the smaller number of regional voters outside of those "six cities" manage to transform themselves into very politically prickly problems for the government in Macquarie Street.

Global Climate Change Response 2021": Advice that Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg & the rest of the Cabinet Ministers, are determined to ignore

 

Moody’s Investor Services, Research Announcement, 12 October 2021:

Moody's - Financial firms that take rapid, predictable pace to zero financed emissions will win the race



Singapore, October 12, 2021 --

• Financial firms are under rising regulatory and commercial pressure to support the global sustainability drive

• Those that take a rapid, well-communicated and measurable pace to net zero financed emissions will be able to preserve their credit quality

As the race to net zero emissions accelerates, banks, insurers and asset managers will need to ramp up climate risk assessments and set clear goals for reaching net zero in their financed emissions, says Moody's Investors Service in a new report. A delayed and disorderly carbon transition would pose the greatest risk to financial firms, while a rapid, well-communicated and measurable transition would keep risks lower.

"Financial firms will lend to and invest in green businesses and new technologies as the transformation to a low-carbon economy creates vast financing opportunities. At the same time, they will help fund the capital needs of corporate clients in carbon-intensive sectors who are aligning their business strategies with low-carbon business models," says Alka Anbarasu, a Moody's Senior Vice President.

Across the G-20, financial firms hold $22 trillion in loans and investments subject to carbon transition risk. Green lending and investments will bring major commercial opportunities to financial firms, but the credit impact of carbon transition will begin to hit home in the second half of this decade when scrutiny of their interim climate goals is likely to intensify.

"A scenario in which concerted action to achieve carbon transition is delayed beyond the end of this decade by uncoordinated government and regulatory policies poses the greatest threat of losses for the financial industry. It risks triggering sudden, large-scale and drastic action in later years by governments, firms, and regulators to limit climate change, hurting the quality of loans and invested assets," says Sean Marion, a Moody's Managing Director. [my yellow highlighting]

Financial firms adopting a rapid but predictable shift towards climate-friendly finance will best preserve their credit quality. In this scenario, financial firms integrate climate risk considerations into their strategic decisions, business processes, governance structures and risk management frameworks, while setting out clear goals for reaching net zero in their financed emissions.

Subscribers can access the report "Financial institutions - Decarbonizing finance: Financial firms need to rise to the challenge of supporting carbon transition" at: http://www.moodys.com/researchdocumentcontentpage.aspx?docid=PBC_1298854

Australia's Morrison Government appears to be living proof of that old adage, birds of a feather do flock together

IMAGE: Woodcut illustration of Vultures — Vector by ronjoe

Anyone who has been delving into Scott Morrison & Angus Taylor’s 98 page AUSTRALIA’S LONG-TERM EMISSIONS REDUCTION PLAN: Modelling and Analysis (Dept. of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources: DISER) document and, attempting to pin down where within its content examples of genuine modelling relying on science, fact-based assumptions and realistic projections, might have seen the name McKinsey & Company crop up on no less than 76 occasions.

That name rang a bell. Here is a brief background…….

The New York Times, 28 October 2021, p.6:

….a revolt has been brewing inside the world's most influential consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, over its support of the planet's biggest polluters.

More than 1,100 employees and counting have signed an open letter to the firm's top partners, urging them to disclose how much carbon their clients spew into the atmosphere. "The climate crisis is the defining issue of our generation," wrote the letter's authors, nearly a dozen McKinsey consultants. "Our positive impact in other realms will mean nothing if we do not act as our clients alter the earth irrevocably."

Several of the authors have resigned since the letter, which has never before been reported, came out last spring -- with one sending out a widely shared email that cited McKinsey's continued work with fossil fuel companies as a primary reason for his departure…..[my yellow highlighting]

The Hill, 27 October 2021:

... Since then, some of the letter's authors, who are consultants at McKinsey, have resigned from the company which is considered the world's most influential consulting firm, the Times reported.

Lawsuits, internal documents and interviews with four ex-McKinsey employees showed that McKinsey has advised at least 43 of the world's top 100 polluters in the past 50 years, per the Times.

The investigation by the Times found that those clients alone, excluding some of McKinsey's other clients who also contribute to pollution, accounted for over one-third of global carbon emissions in 2018.

At least one consultant who resigned specifically cited McKinsey's work with fossil fuel companies as his main reason for leaving. The Environmental Protection Agency has noted that "burning fossil fuels changes the climate more than any other human activity."

“Walking away from these sectors might appease absolutist critics,” D.J. Carella, a spokesman for McKinsey, said to the Times, adding that it "would do nothing to solve the climate challenge."…. [my yellow highlighting]

The New York Times, 6 November 2021:

A House committee has requested documents related to the firm's advice to drug makers and potential conflicts of interest with the F.D.A.

In a new assault on the global consulting giant McKinsey & Company, Congress on Friday started an investigation into the firm's role in the opioid crisis, sending a letter demanding records related to its "business practices, conflicts of interest and management standards."

The 12-page letter, which was sent by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, asked for names of McKinsey clients in the health care industry as well as documents connected to its work with opioid manufacturers, distributors and retailers. The committee is also looking at how McKinsey's consulting for drugmakers may conflict with work it has done for the Food and Drug Administration.

By advising opioid makers and "the federal agency regulating their conduct," McKinsey "may have had a significant negative impact on Americans' health," the committee said.

The letter was signed by the committee's chairwoman, Representative Carolyn B. Maloney of New York, who requested that McKinsey produce the documents by Nov. 19. McKinsey has a policy of not identifying its clients or the advice it gives.

A spokesman for the firm on Friday said McKinsey had "received the committee's letter and will engage directly with the committee regarding their requests."

This year, McKinsey agreed to pay all 50 states more than $600 million to settle investigations into how it had helped "turbocharge" opioid sales, focusing mostly on its work with Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. McKinsey did not admit any wrongdoing.

The request on Friday follows a narrower one on Aug. 23, from a bipartisan group of six U.S. senators seeking records from the F.D.A. on its work with McKinsey at the same time that it was regulating opioid manufacturers, calling that relationship "a potential conflict of interest." The senators asked for more information about the firm's work with the F.D.A. division that approved certain classes of drugs, including prescription opioids.

OxyContin and similar painkillers can be addictive and prone to abuse. From 1999 to 2019, nearly 500,000 people in the United States died of opioid overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…..  [my yellow highlighting]

Reuters, 18 August 2021:

… McKinsey earlier this year reached agreements with state attorneys general to pay $641 million to resolve claims it helped drug manufacturers, including OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, to design marketing plans and boost sales of painkillers.

Lawsuits by cities, counties and others followed, and Breyer now oversees at least 51 cases…. [my yellow highlighting]

The New York Times, 3 December 2019 - updated 24 February 2021:

Just days after he took office in 2017, President Trump set out to make good on his campaign pledge to halt illegal immigration. In a pair of executive orders, he ordered “all legally available resources” to be shifted to border detention facilities, and called for hiring 10,000 new immigration officers.

The logistical challenges were daunting, but as luck would have it, Immigration and Customs Enforcement already had a partner on its payroll: McKinsey & Company, an international consulting firm brought on under the Obama administration to help engineer an “organizational transformation” in the ICE division charged with deporting migrants who are in the United States unlawfully.

ICE quickly redirected McKinsey toward helping the agency figure out how to execute the White House’s clampdown on illegal immigration.

But the money-saving recommendations the consultants came up with made some career ICE workers uncomfortable. They proposed cuts in spending on food for migrants, as well as on medical care and supervision of detainees, according to interviews with people who worked on the project for both ICE and McKinsey and 1,500 pages of documents obtained from the agency after ProPublica filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act…. [my yellow highlighting]

The New York Times, 9 January 2019:

A judge in Virginia reopened a more than two-year-old case on Wednesday to consider accusations that the powerful consultancy McKinsey & Company had defrauded his court while advising a bankrupt coal company…..

McKinsey already faces similar claims of misconduct from Mr. Alix in the bankruptcy of another energy company, Westmoreland Coal, in Texas…. [my yellow highlighting]

Financial Times, 20 February 2019:

McKinsey has agreed to a $15m settlement with the US Department of Justice to resolve claims that the influential consulting firm failed to properly disclose conflicts of interest in bankruptcy cases over two decades.

The settlement on Tuesday is among the largest made by a bankruptcy professional accused of failing to comply with disclosure rules, according to the justice department, and adds to the mounting scrutiny of the professional services giant.... [my yellow highlighting]

Consulting.us, 4 December 2020:

The USTP [US Trustee Program] started the mediation with McKinsey in 2019 after noting that the consulting firm withheld “critical details” about connections to parties with a potential economic interest in the $1.4 billion Westmoreland bankruptcy case.

Westmoreland Coal emerged from Chapter 11 in June 2019. McKinsey, however, will forgo its fees for the advisory work performed, which the watchdog estimates at millions of dollars…. [my yellow highlighting]

"There is no country in the world which does climate change delay quite like Australia" and Prime Minister 'Scotty From Marketing' Morrison will double down on his refusal to act as the federal election draws closer

 

The Guardian, 13 November 2021:

The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the emissions reduction minister,  Angus Taylor. Photograph: Darren England/AAP

In April this year, Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, said that “we will not achieve net zero in the cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of our inner cities”. This explains why he turned to the salt-of-the-Earth hard-workin’ rural folk at McKinsey – one of the biggest billion-dollar multinational consulting agencies on the planet – to produce the Australian government’s long-awaited modelling explaining the pathway to “net zero by 2050”.

In some parallel universe, the task may have gone to Australia’s chief science agency, the CSIRO (a former employer of mine). But it was revealed at Senate estimates a few weeks back that despite the CSIRO applying for the tender, the government rejected them and paid McKinsey $6m to model the changes Australian society must go through to decarbonise within 30 years. This choice makes sense in the context of recent leaks to the New York Times that revealed McKinsey has advised 43 of the 100 biggest corporate polluters, including “BP, Exxon Mobil, Gazprom and Saudi Aramco”. 1,100 of its employees signed an open letter pleading the consultancy reveal the carbon impacts of its clients.

We’ll never know exactly what the Australian government asked of the agency, but we finally know what got spat out the other end: an extremely weird document blatantly designed to protect the interests of Australia’s fossil fuel industries while creating the illusion of ambitious climate action. It was delayed until the final Friday of Cop26 to avoid embarrassment during the global deliberations, so we knew it’d be bad. But it’s worse than expected……

.... of the various pathways modelled in this document, Australia’s government picked the one that doesn’t even reach net zero by 2050. Their preferred scenario, “The Plan”, hits 2050 with a whopping 94 megatonnes of emissions remaining, or 215 if you exclude questionable offsets. They reached the point of 85% reduction in emissions, and very simply gave up. This ignored 15% is breezily labelled “further technology breakthroughs” in the document. It’s both amusingly honest and stunningly irresponsible.

As RenewEconomy’s Michael Mazengarb pointed out on Twitter, they also modelled a scenario in which emissions reductions go all the way to zero, albeit also reliant on offsets. That has a near-zero impact on economic growth, but it’s explicitly dismissed because this scenario also results in worse outcomes for the coal and gas mining industries.

Coal and gas sent overseas is responsible for roughly three times Australia’s annual domestic emissions. If the 72 coal projects and 44 oil and gas projects in Australia are realised, this will become six times Australia’s domestic emissions. They won’t all be realised, but you get an idea of their wide-eyed fantasies of growth. It’s this massive engine of planetary warming that the net zero plan ring-fences. Snarling at threats to fossil fuel companies feels like the only imperative this document takes seriously.

There is a reserved concession to the possibility that the coal export industry may shrink, with one graphic showing future coal exports dropping by 50%, by 2050. But in the same chart, gas exports increase by 13%. Both are laughable, considering the International Energy Agency’s “net zero by 2050” global scenario sees the total global consumption of both coal and gas drop to near-zero by 2050.

Part of why this discrepancy exists is that the IEA’s net zero scenario is limiting warming to 1.5C, but the government is targeting 2C, which allows for worse emissions into the future at the cost of more severe and catastrophic impacts of warming, particularly in the Global South. In fact 1.5C is not mentioned a single time in the hundreds of pages of the report. Like the 85%, it just breezily gives up part-way there.

Fundamentally, what McKinsey has laid out for us is that if you take the laziest, slowest and most bad-faith approach to climate action, it’s very cheap and not immediately disruptive. Take credit for technological advancements that occur in other countries, continue extracting and emitting in the interim, and slap it all with a counterfeit climate action label to avoid scrutiny. Being a tech free rider while worsening the problem you claim to be solving is a wonderfully tempting climate philosophy.

Of course, McKinsey’s modelling buries an important caveat in the guts of the PDF: the physical consequences of climate change are not included in their modelling. That means they count the benefits of falling back to slower action and worse emissions, and ignore the consequences.

In reality, we cannot ignore the consequences. Climate change is a physical problem in which the accumulation of greenhouse gases heats our habitat and hurts us, very badly. A tower of greasy tricks deployed to protect the fossil fuel industry changes nothing about the laws of atmospheric physics, and the pain we experience when governments don’t act fast enough…..

Truly, though, there is no country in the world that does climate delay quite like Australia. The hammy nationalism, the role of fantasy and trickery in its climate and energy rhetoric, and the total absence of shame in defending its role as a key cause of significant physical damage to Earth. It’s only going to escalate as the next federal election inches closer. Better strap in: it’s going to get even weirder. [my yellow highlighting]

Read the full article here.

Australian-French relations remain tense

 

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison giving his version of the Macron-initiated phone call while carefully avoiding mention of the fact that for weeks the French President refused to take his calls. 

Australian read out from the phone call with President Macron: “They had a candid discussion on the bilateral relationship.” @SBSNews #auspol 🇦🇺 🇫🇷 pic.twitter.com/z8gZOUDjeo

— Pablo Viñales (@pablovinales) October 28, 2021

This is what French President Emmanuel Macron states....

Élysée Palace, France, statement, 28 October 2021:

Statement on the phone call between President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

On Thursday, 28 October, President Macron had a telephone call with the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr Scott Morrison.

President Macron recalled that Australia’s unilateral decision to scale back the French-Australian strategic partnership by putting an end to the ocean-class submarine programme in favour of another as-yet unspecified project broke the relationship of trust between our two countries. The situation of the French businesses and their subcontractors, including Australian companies, affected by this decision will be given our utmost attention.

It is now up to the Australian Government to propose tangible actions that embody the political will of Australia’s highest authorities to redefine the basis of our bilateral relationship and continue joint action in the Indo-Pacific.

Looking ahead to the upcoming G20 in Rome and COP26 in Glasgow, the President of the French Republic encouraged the Australian Prime Minister to adopt ambitious measures commensurate with the climate challenge, in particular the ratcheting up of the nationally determined contribution, the commitment to cease production and consumption of coal at the national level and abroad, and greater Australian support to the International Solar Alliance.

CLIMATE CHANGE State of Play Australia 2021: Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his federal government continue to disappoint

 

Proposed billboard display
Glasgow, Scotland UK
UN COP26 2021
A Rational Fear

The Guardian, 26 October 2021:

There’s not a lot of good news, so for the sake of all our sanity, let’s start with the good news. The Morrison government has adopted a mid-century target of net zero emissions by 2050.

Now before anyone starts yelling – it is true that Australia already adopted that objective, more or less, when we signed the Paris agreement five years ago.

It is also true that the international climate conference Scott Morrison is about to attend in Glasgow is focused on 2030, not 2050, because the threat of global heating is urgent.

Net zero is, in fact, the bare minimum required for Australia to have any international credibility. But Morrison has landed a target that points Australia’s carbon-intensive economy tentatively in the direction of a necessary transition – and that really is a start. It would be churlish to say otherwise.

But sadly, that’s where our good news begins and ends. Morrison’s so-called mid-century plan has very little substantive content.

It really is extraordinary that we could spend the best part of a year tracking towards Tuesday’s pre-Glasgow crescendo – and land with a “plan” that is actually the status quo with some new speculative graphs.

But that’s exactly where we are. After the Coalition’s disgraceful, destructive decade – measured substantively, looking at proposed actions, not slogans – the government is still running to stay still, without any obvious remorse, introspection, or regret.

Let’s consider Tuesday’s omissions.

We weren’t told how much Morrison’s grand bargain with the Nationals will cost the country, either in dollars or in delayed ambition.…..

Could we please see the modelling underpinning the whole exercise? “Eventually,” the prime minister said, which schedules a release sometime between now and never…….

The concept the prime minister unfurled in the Blue Room at Parliament House on Tuesday was a whole-of-economy transition achieved by technology magic (with a safety valve of carbon offsets in the event that tech is not quite as magical as hoped).

Australia’s net zero strategy will be delivered by … wait for it … existing policy.

…...But Australia remains mired in the world of voluntary action, of carrots not sticks, not because that is the right thing to do, but because the Coalition remains a prisoner of its own weaponised nonsense, and it won’t give up the nonsense entirely until it is certain that telling the truth won’t cost it an election.

To give him due credit, Morrison is starting to decouple his political movement from the lies – the $100 lamb roasts and the Whyalla wipeout. The crushing narrative of cost and delay is slowly morphing in the direction of inexorability and opportunity.

But if the Coalition were to change course radically, it would be tantamount to an admission that a party of government in this country has traded the national interest for a handful of regional Queensland seats for the best part of a decade.

So we are asked to amble in the direction of this transition, whistling quietly to ourselves.......

Read the full article by The Guardian's political editor Katharine Murphy here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

26 October 2021

Net zero by 2050 welcome but taxpayer not business remains key driver

The Carbon Market Institute (CMI) welcomes the federal government’s commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 and looks forward to further detail on the plan in addition to the slides presented at today's press conference, but is disappointed that the taxpayer rather than business will remain the main driver with $20 billion earmarked to underwrite the transition.

CMI noted that credits for climate action and offsets can provide important assistance in a transition to net-zero emissions and that Australia has credible systems of integrity and plans to expand them, but we need to have integrity in climate, energy and economic transition policy as well as integrity in the credits.

“While the 2050 net-zero emissions target is welcome, it appears the plan is a missed opportunity to use existing policies as a springboard to a technology and market investment approach that would have business not the taxpayer as the main driver of the plan”, said CMI CEO John Connor.

“Net zero by 2050 is the minimum entry ticket to the climate policy credibility and alone won’t fend off potential carbon tariffs and higher capital costs increasingly facing carbon intensive companies and countries. That will require stronger 2030 commitments, not just projections, and policies that enable business to take greater responsibility and guide future decarbonisation investments.”

“A policy that limits ambition to net zero by 2050 and positions the taxpayer as the main driver of decarbonisation is also a missed opportunity to fully leverage the investments and opportunities arising from state government and business actions, and position Australia as a leader in realising the opportunities of the transition to net-zero emissions.”

“Australia should be supporting 2030 emission reductions of at least 50% and make them part of the currency of international climate and trade negotiations, our nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the UNFCCC Paris Agreement. The failure to convert strengthened emission reduction projections of up to 35% from 2005 levels resulting from stronger business and government actions into an even more ambitious NDC is a major missed opportunity.”

“Australia has existing climate policies that could be used as a springboard to increasing our ambition, including the federal government’s Safeguard Mechanism should be strengthened to catalyse the market’s transition to net zero emissions,” said Mr Connor.

The Safeguard Mechanism sets carbon pollution limits for businesses emitting more than 100,000 tonnes annually, but is currently delivering extremely limited results. The CMI, alongside the Business Council of Australia (BCA), is calling for Safeguard baselines to be reduced over time, with enforceable incentives to invest in pollution reduction. CMI’s recent survey revealed 79% of business respondents support reducing pollution limits set via the Safeguard Mechanism.

“CMI has supported key elements of the Technology Roadmap and, in the absence of policies to make business the main driver of emission reduction initiatives, the taxpayer will need to step up. However public investments, and the use of any offsets, should be aligned to supporting the infrastructure and community transition assistance needed to decarbonise by at least 50% by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

“CMI welcomes continuing government support for delivering natural and geological carbon sequestration in Australia and the Indo-Pacific region, we do have a world leading system of integrity in developing credits for carbon reduction and offsets. However, we must also have integrity in the transition and that requires a clearer pathway with greater interim targets.

“Carbon farming is already providing substantial additional revenue streams for landholders and investment in regional Australia and there is significant potential to expand its contributions but it should come with a credible decarbonisation pathways and policies.

“The federal government’s announcement today included little detail on policy or modelling undertaken and many aspects of what was announced are already known. We look forward to further clarity on its pending update of the Technology Investment Roadmap and other dimensions of its plans to address climate change and catalyse the inevitable global transition to a net-zero emissions economy”, said John Connor.

Distributed by Medianet

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Australian Prime Minister Scott John Morrison, 26 October 2021:

“Australia's plan to reach our net zero target by 2050. The Morrison Government will act in a practical, responsible way to deliver net zero emissions by 2050 while preserving Australian jobs and generating new opportunities for industries and regional Australia….

The Australian way. Australians want action on climate change. And so do I. But they also don’t want their electricity bills to skyrocket, the lights to go off, for their jobs to be put at risk or for the way of life in rural and regional communities to be sacrificed…..”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Australia’s Long-Term Emissions Reduction Plan: A whole-of-economy plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050”, released 26 October 2021 can be found at:

https://www.industry.gov.au/sites/default/files/October%202021/document/australias-long-term-emissions-reduction-plan.pdf

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

🇬🇧 UK 2050 plan? 21 docs. 1868 pages. Heat & building strategy. Heat pump grants. EV incentives. End gas boilers by 2035, ICE sales by 2030! Treasury reviewed. CCC approved. Pathways for every sector to 2037. Legally binding. 5 year targets.

🇦🇺 Aus? No plan. Just more bullshit.

— Mike Cannon-Brookes 👨🏼‍💻🧢🇦🇺 (@mcannonbrookes) October 26, 2021

Large foreign investment funds have warned they could blacklist Australia and cut billions of dollars of investments in the country if the Morrison Government fails to join the rest of the world in committing to a net-zero 2050 greenhouse gas emissions target

 

Financial Review, 5 July 2021:

Large foreign investment funds have warned they could blacklist Australia and cut billions of dollars of investments in the country if the federal government fails to join the rest of the world in committing to a net-zero 2050 greenhouse gas emissions target.

The warning backs up concerns of the Reserve Bank of Australia that the economy is at risk from foreign investors withdrawing capital because of perceptions among global fund managers that the Morrison government is resisting strong action on climate change.

The $US1.4 trillion ($1.9 trillion) investment management firm, Invesco, said Australia’s climate change policies were an important consideration for its investments under its environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) rules.

Invesco’s UK-based Asian equities director, John Pellegry, told The Australian Financial Review that “among developed markets, Australia’s approach appears to be behind others”.

“This may impact our investments in the future if other parts of the investment universe are tackling the issues more effectively.

“An inadequate climate change policy could lead to the selling of Australian investments – for example if required by our clients or if necessary to adhere to stricter policies outside Australia – for example, EU [European Union] policies.

“A greater valuation discount would also be warranted for the additional risk of investing in companies with less growth prospects and subject to greater externality costs – such as carbon pricing – if behind the curve versus global competitors…...

RBA warns overseas markets are looking to Australia to decarbonise its production processes – including the est. 70% of product the agricultural sector exports

 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:

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…….