I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM. Negotiators of this year's Global Climate Summit in Brazil almost didn't reach a deal, but when they did, the waded down pledge left many countries reeling. While the agreement boosts finance for poorer nations experiencing the worst of global warming, it
fails to even mention the fossil fuels driving it. Outside the official COP process, dozens of countries signed a pledge to phase out fossil fuels, but while Australia signed, Anthony Albanezi says his government will keep approving new coal and gas projects. Today, Greenpeace Australia Pacific Chief Executive David Rittter on what really happened in Brazil and where the COP is now just a cop out. It's Tuesday, November twenty five. So, David, you just got back from Brazil and you were there
in Vellum for COP thirty. So first of all, what was it like to be there on the ground as all of these countries were coming together negotiating their next steps on climate action.
Look, it's an absolutely extraordinary experience. The venue itself is vast, There are thousands of people from literally just about every country in the world. There's an atmosphere that sort of veers between the electric and the frustrated, the board and the highly emotional. You are tired of.
False solutions, we are tired of corporate.
Of this system. And then of course there's all of the energy that's outside the actual venue, that's on the streets, that's just circulating around this remarkable global event.
Really, and I heard a statistic at one point that one in every twenty five participants at COP thirty is a fossil fuel lobbyist. So is that true? And how much influence do those lobby groups have over these talks?
Yeah, Look, that research came from our good mates at Global Witness, and it's a shocking statistic because obviously fossil fuels are the number one driver of the climate crisis. So why you'd have all these lobbyists loose within the conference. It's meant to respond to the crisis. You know, it's mystifying to anyone who hears that for the first time. The curious thing when you're actually there is people don't sort of walk around carrying signs saying I'm a fossil
fuel lobbyist. And that's because they get access through various means, through trade association delegations, through what are called party overflow badges, which are the badges that government receives or even as
part of official country delegations. So there they are, and they've got positions of access, and there's no question that they're able to have a direct influence on the sorts of positions that governments take, which really reflects what's going on in the home countries most of the time anyway, which is that the fossil fuel lobby is very, very active all of the time trying to persuade governments to not take the decisions that are in the interests of the human race and of nature.
And just lay out for me, then what it is that this summit was meant to achieve, what was the goal of COP thirty, what was being negotiated exactly.
It was a very significant coper. I mean they're all significant, but this one marked the first one since a one point five degree global temperature mark had been breached over the course of a whole year.
For the first time, warming reached one point five to two degrees in the period from February twenty twenty three to January twenty twenty four. World leaders have promised in twenty fifteen to try to limit the planets long term temporatorize to one point five degrees.
It was the COP by which all the countries should have submitted their twenty thirty five climate targets, which are absolutely crucial targets for shaping how we're going with global action.
World leaders are under pressure to present tougher emission reduction targets for twenty thirty five ahead of COP thirty in Brazil, thousands.
Of It was a COP that took place really following the fantastic decision from the International Court of Justice or the advisory opinion i should say for the International Court of Justice, which found that states do have an obligation in protecting human rights from climate change.
Two.
The Court added that failing to protect the planet from the effects of climate change could be a violation of international role.
So, for all of these reasons, the context of the COP was highly charged, and it was heralded to be a COP where there was going to be a breakthrough or hopefully going to be a breakthrough on ending deforestation because it was a COP that was being held literally in the Amazon as well as hoped by many that it was going to be a COP that would really give us a breakthrough on a global roadmap for tackling fossil fuels and those two things, they are the two
keys to getting on top of the climate crisis.
Okay, and so at the end of the summer, then what was actually agreed.
Upon, Well, look if it was an agreement that frankly did not reflect the needs of the moment. We do need transformation at emergency speed and scale, and it didn't achieve that. It didn't achieve a new forest action plan, and it didn't achieve the kind of breakthrough on climate finance that is desperately needed to support these efforts. Those key ingredients simply aren't there.
The COP thirty climates so much in Brazil, ended with cheers and applause, but not without misgivings. The deal contained no explicit reference to transition away from fossil fuels.
But it's very important, I think, to not see cops as kind of binary things where it's everything or it's nothing, Because there were some significant things that came out of this COP. The Brazil presidency did commit to the development of a new roadmap from transition away from fossil fuels.
We know some of you had greater ambitions for some of the issues that held I, as President of COP thirty, will therefore create two roadmaps, one on halting and reverting deforestation, another to transitioning away from fossil shools in a just orderly and that.
Now, that is not the same as a formal commitment, but it is something that can be worked with. And then of course there was the Belm Declaration, which I think is actually the great note of hope from the COP and certainly of a very great importance for Australia.
Yeah, well, let's talk about the declaration. What's in it?
Well, the Bellum Declaration came from a really significant block of more than eighty governments which backed the idea of a fossil fuel roadmap, with great leadership coming from Columbia and also as always from the Pacific Island nations.
The COP of the truth cannot support an outcome that igno science.
There is no mitigation if we.
Cannot discuss transitioning away from fossil fuelm.
This is something we want to do.
In response to the lack of a roadmap coming out of Vellum.
We were expecting then a smaller group of twenty four countries formally signed on to the declaration, and Australia is one of those, and we should be really delighted that
Australia is one of those twenty four nations. And what's in it, Well, it references a transition away from fossil fuels, it references the International Court of Justice opinion, and it's got a by the standards of these things quite fast start in the sense that the first conference for the Bellum Declaration is going to occur at the end of April in Colombia, and that'll be a really significant moment
because it starts to give us the big mow. It starts to give us some momentum around global cooperation to end fossil fuel usage, which is what has been my sorely lacking from international climate governance over many years. So we need to jump on this. We need to grab this momentum and give it as much speed and power as we collectively can.
Coming up, what does the Bellum Declaration mean for Australia's gas plans?
So overnight Australia has signed up to the Lem Declaration on the Transition of Wave from Fossil fuels. I was wondering how that kind of fits with the government's future GAT strategy, which stay that natural gas will be needed to twenty fifty and beyond.
A possile fuel.
Well, it is needed. It's a part of the transition which is occurring.
What you need to back up renewables as firming capacity.
That's what you know.
So, as you say, Australia signed the Bellum Declaration, but almost immediately afterwards Anthony Albanesi told journalists that Australia planned to continue to develop new fossil fuel projects. So does this declaration does it mean anything?
Well, look, I've had a look at the Prime Minister's remarks and there is sort of strangely equivocal, kind of have your cake and eat it too set of remarks. I think it's still sinking in to governments all over the world that things have to change. Now. What we have seen already in Australia is a scale of change that some people would have said was unimaginable even as much as a decade or two decades ago, in terms of the uptake of renewables, that the rapid wind down
of coal. We are going to have to see a similar jump in speed and ambition going forward, and what that needs to very practically manifest in is a road map for Australia to phase out fossil fuels, including exports, at a timeline that is consistent with the Paris Agreement and that would be consistent with the BLM declaration.
And David, I think there is a lot of skepticism at this point around what the cop summits can achieve. So, having just been what is your assessment of the value of these summits now? On balance? Do you think that they provide tangible steps forward on climate or do they allow countries to say they're doing something meaningful on climate change, even if that action doesn't go far enough.
I think it's a question we should always be asking ourselves. But it is possible to take a nuanced view of these things and to say yes, there's no doubt that some countries do use participation in these things as a cloak for inaction, or even as an opportunity to frustrate action. And yet when you've got a global problem, it makes sense to bring the countries of the world together to
solve that global problem. And there have been extraordinary breakthroughs in international environmental governance over the years, from the preservation of Antarctica to the saving of the whales, the Montreal Protocol.
And there's no doubt as well that if you look at the decades now of the unf Triple C process, you do see as a consequence of the commitments that are made in these negotiations, that projected temperature rise, although it is still in the wildly dangerous and unacceptable realm, is much reduced from where we were even at the time, for example, of the Paris Agreement itself, and then to drill down into that just a little bit more, I
couldn't tell you. It's literally a countless number of meetings I have been in over the years where leaders of corporations or members of governments of various stripes will look you in the eye and tell you that they are making the commitments that they are because of the Powis Agreement. So we cannot, I think, ever overlook the very significant
consequences of the steps that have been achieved. But we can also have in mind, with great honesty, the frustration that the negotiations don't move as fast as the safety of the human race and the safety of nature require.
Well just on that, then let's come back to the critical point of what Australia would actually have to do now, so in the next twelve months before the next cop to meet the commitments that came out of Brazil, including the Bellum Declaration.
Well, there's a great chance just this week for the Australian government to get right its approach to the EPBC law reforms. That we absolutely need to see our one and only piece of federal legislation to protect nature to properly embed climate considerations in there, because you can't have a credible Nature Protection Act without having some embedding of what's going on with climate change. So that's an immediate thing.
Beyond that, we do need to see a time bound plan for fossil fuel phase out and that is simply good government. Any government that is not able to look the people of Australia in the eye, the business community of Australia in the eye and say we need to phase out fossil fuels and we've got a plan for
that is not doing its job. There also needs to be an end to new colon gas approvals and across the board in policy terms, Australia should be looking to see where it can improve it's twenty thirty five target. And then the final thing, of course, is every opportunity that Australia can play in scaffolding and standing with the Pacific island nations that so often have demonstrated leadership on climate change. Any opportunity to do that should be taken.
David, thank you so much for your time.
Thanks very much for having me. Great to Jack.
Also in the news, people who send deep fakes of another person without their consent could face fines of up to one hundred and sixty five thousand dollars under a new bill introduced to the Senate by Independent Senator David Pocock. The plan would see a dedicated complaints mechanism added to the Online Safety Act and would grant the E Safety Commissioner powers to enforce the removal of deep fakes and issue fines. Australians would also be able to two perpetrators directly.
Senator Pocock says the government has dropped the ball and as it stands, unless a deep fake is sexually explicit, very little can be done about it, and the Chief Executive of the Business Council of Australia, Bran Black, says he's confident the government will be able to reach a deal with the Coalition on environmental reforms. This week. The BCA has been lobbying the Coalition to strike a deal
which would cut out the Greens. It wants the government to weaken the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency, among other changes to the proposed laws. He says when the laws are passed, they will deliver a net overall benefit to business. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.