And today I'm joined by the two ministers, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy the Treasurer, but also by Matt Kean, the Chair of the Climate Change Authority.
Having released the National Climate Risk Assessment, a report full of apocalyptic climate warnings, earlier this week, the government has now announced its twenty thirty five emissions target. Although it's not a target exactly, it's a target range.
Today I announced that we have accepted their advice at Australia's twenty thirty five emissions target be sixty two to seventy percent. This is a responsible target, back by the science, back by a practical plan to get there, and built on proven technology.
The government says the target is both achievable and ambitious, but there are others who say the government has set themselves a target that means they don't have to do or change anything.
These states, the collective action from the States would already each that target range by twenty thirty five, so nationally we are adding absolutely nothing. And they know that what they're doing is not enough on the science, on the modeling, on what we're being told from every serious climate agency, and so they don't want to set themselves a target
that they will fail into the future. So what we have is a target range that will mean no change to anything that they're doing and no drastic action.
I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM today contributing editor of The New Daily and Euymicus on how ambitious Australia's missions target really is and whether it's enough to keep global warming below one point five degrees. It's Friday, September nineteen.
Alongside our twenty thirty five target today and the release of this report here Australia's net zero plan going forward, we're announcing significant new measures that build on our existing plans.
Amy the Abbadezy government has just announced its updated emissions reduction target, committing to a reduction of somewhere between sixty two and seventy percent by twenty thirty five. And along with the target, they've announced some measures to help get there, including a five billion dollar a zero fund and two billion dollars to drive down electricity prices.
This will help to accelerate long term renewable projects right across our nation. In addition to that, we know that getting emissions down in the resources sector and heavy industry is the next major area and will help heavy industry to do the heavy lifting.
So tell me what you make of these announcements.
Yeah, I mean all of these things are basically just expanding on existing programs and existing targets. They're basically saying, we're going to expand the amount of renewable energy that we're putting into the grid, which is something that they've been doing since the first time that they were elected. And we're going to start funding other projects and other technologies that we think are going to help us get
to the point that we need to get to. But the one thing that they're not doing, the absolute crucial thing they are not doing, is stopping new coal and gas expansion. And if they just did that, we could meet our climate targets. We could actually plan for a future where we would have the technology on top of building upon the cut from admissions from not having new
coal and gas. But they won't do that. And so all of these announcements that they're making in terms of oh, we're going to expand this renewables program, Oh, we're going to fund green hydrogen, we're going to start funding green steel, none of that really matters because we're not doing the one thing the science, the UN, every climate agency is telling us we need to do, which is stop new coal and gas projects.
And the big question in regards to the target range, obviously is how does this range of sixty two to seventy percent stack up in terms of being able to limit global warming to one point five degrees? Can that be achieved?
No, it can't. We've already passed that. I mean, I think the Climate Risk Assessment Report, which was released quite recently also showed that we're already past that.
Australia's first National Climate Risk Assessment is warning one and a half million Australians are at risk from sea level rises by twenty to fifty unless climate change can be limited. The assessment also warns climate related hazards will increase, heat related deaths will soar, and the cost of disaster recovery.
Will jump to more than forty billion dollars a year.
The minimum we needed to do was about seventy five percent. That was the bare minimum we needed to commit to by twenty thirty five, and instead we're saying, oh, you know, we can be somewhere in the low sixties and that'll still get us there. I mean, the entire Furfee around.
How the Albanezy government is framing its climate emissions reduction plan is that there is going to be technology that doesn't exist yet that is going to save us in the future, that we don't need to do too much because this technology is going to come at some point between twenty fifty and that's going to make everything better, so we don't actually need to rush. That is not what the science is telling us. And I don't know how many people have actually read the Climate Risk Assessment Report.
It didn't get as much coverage as it should, and that's probably because I think we all have a bit of fatigue, and I think when we're looking at modeling, we're just like, oh, well, you can model anything, but this is some serious modeling. And one of the things that was so striking to me was it basically said we are going to have one and a half million people have unlivable homes by twenty fifty.
By twenty fifty, the number of coastal communities located in high and very high risk areas will increase substantially, and if current population remains the same, that will represent an increase to one point five million people impacted in coastal areas by civil rise, corrosion and other impacts.
If you are currently twenty, that is when you're in your midlife, your super is still going to be another two or three decades away. From that point, you will be just starting to pay off your mortgage, if indeed you've managed to have one, you still have decades and
decades of your life to live. And essentially, what the government is saying with this this target range that it's set is we don't have to rush to do anything about that, because we'll eventually work it out sometime in the future, just not now.
And when you say the government is waiting on technology that doesn't really exist yet, you're talking about things like carbon capture and storage and what else.
Yeah, I mean carbon capture and storage is probably the one that we know the most about, which is this idea that you can basically capture the carbon bombs and then bury them in the ground or under the sea. Australia recently is changing laws to allow you to bury
carbon bombs within the ocean seabed. We don't know if it works or not, but it's like this idea of offsets as well, which is the idea that you can choose not to burn a forest or cut down a forest and not get rid of the sea grass, or basically just get land put aside and you're not going to touch that, and that's going to offset any of
the emissions that your project is generating. But this idea that you can just offset it by not cutting down those trees and that's going to allow you to continue emitting or in some cases increasing emitting, depending on how much you're offsetting with your project, that that is going to be what saves us doesn't even make sense on the mass. But this is the sort of technology, the sort of ideas that we're being sold as the solutions
to the climate crisis. So people aren't even really being able to have faith that this technology is going to come down the line and save us because what we're being told so far doesn't make sense.
Coming up why climate targets aren't just an environmental problem but a diplomatic one too.
This is a range that I'm hopeful that we can overachieve on our range positions Australia as a global leader on climate ambition. In fact, we are presenting a higher ambition than most other advanced economies.
The Chair of the Climate Change authorities. Matt Kean. He says that this target it positions Australia as a global leader in terms of climate ambition. The government will take this target to the UN General Assembly alongside other world leaders. So how do our targets compare to what other countries are promising?
Well, not great And I mean we don't even have to go that far to find people who are going to be very upset with us. The specific is going to be very, very upset with this target. They're already very upset with what Australia is doing and continuing to approve colon gas, and they've made that eminently clear in all sorts of forums.
Fossil fuel production expansion is an internationally wrongful act under international law.
We know from the ip PCC reports that Australia needs to do more in stopping new coal and new gas. That has been made very very clear. Even if we switch to renewables, we do all of the things that the Albanezy government is doing, and those are good things.
But even if we do all of that, if we continue to open up coal and gas which is burned in other countries which you know aren't as far along the line of the renewable transition, or their economies haven't managed to transition to what we're all trying to do
by twenty fifty. We're still responsible for that. And it's things like that that are brought up at the UN meetings that we conveniently just kind of push to the side whenever we talk about climate action, because we're trying to pretend that what we export and what we send out doesn't count to what we are doing. Of course it does. And I'm not saying we stop or coal and gas that we currently have. I'm saying that we don't need to open up up any more.
And as you mentioned, our emissions targets are not just an environmental or economic issue, they're a diplomatic one. Australia has been trying to strengthen its security ties with the Pacific island nations. We've recently seen more than one agreement fail to get over the line, in particular with Papua New Guinea. So how much was climate policy a sticking point in terms of that defense agreement.
Well, we know it's a sticking point not just for that defense agreement but with all of our relations with the Pacific.
The government hope to emerge from the Pacific over the last two weeks, holding aloft two documents or two treaties, one from Vanuuatu, the Nakamal Agreement that it hoped to sign last week, and this defense treaty that has been talked about so widely and so broadly for the last three or four weeks in particular, and in the end it's emerging with none.
So we have had Vaniwatu also say no to an agreement. It's the second time in two years where Vdiwatu has said, actually, no, we're not willing to sign away our strategic sovereignty for whatever you're offering us Australia.
Some of my ministers and my mbs, they feel that it requires more discussions through particularly on some of the specific wordings in the agreement.
We know from the Pacific Island Forum, from the multiple statements that have been put out by Pacific Region leaders that they want Australia to actually act seriously on this. It's because Pacific Islands know better than any of us the impacts of climate change. They are already living it. They know what it's like to see your home start
to disappear underwater. Australia knows what that's like too, because we've started working on refugee deals climate refugee deals with some Pacific island regions, where basically we're saying, well, you can migrate to Australia because your home is no longer going to exist. So all of these things do count
in terms of how the Pacific views us. So when we go to them and we say, oh, hey, guys, we'd really like you to make us the security partner of choice, they're increasingly saying, actually, we're not sure that that works for us, because you're not listening to what we're saying when it comes to climate, when it comes to how you treat us, when it comes to these agreements that you make with us, Why should you only ever view us through the lens of defense when you
can't actually see that our entire lives, culture and nations are at risk and you're not actually doing anything about that. And it comes to a shock to a lot of people. But I speak to quite a lot of people in the Pacific or who work in the Pacific trying to get agreement from the government, and we are not popular in the Pacific, and you can see the reasons for that.
So it is going to have further repercussion. So everybody who worries about China getting inroads into the Pacific, These sorts of decisions that Australia makes when it comes to climate, when it comes to the environment, when it comes to proper action, all impact on that and we're not exactly telling them that they can count on us.
Well, Amy, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you.
Also in the news today, reactions are trickling in after the Prime Minister's emissions productions announcement yesterday. Opposition leader Susan Lee says the target quote fails on both counts, on both cost and credibility, with National's leader David Little Proud also adding they will not support the target. Meanwhile, Independent Senator David Pocock has criticized the Prime Minister for not being ambitious enough, saying the government is not listening to
the science and that quote. We cannot give up on this. And Alan Jones has pleaded not guilty to twenty seven charges of indecent assault and some alleged victims have withdrawn from the case. In the first hearing for the disgraced former broadcaster held yesterday. Jones had been charged with a number of offenses in New South Wales between twenty one and twenty nineteen. Yesterday, eleven of his charges of aggravated indecent assault were downgraded and the number of victims involved
in the case dropped from eleven to nine. The case will go to trial in front of a magistrate next month. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.