Australia’s climate action should be acknowledged

Ray Peck, Hawthorn, Oct 25, 2024

Thanks Julian Cribb for alerting readers to the 2024 State of the Climate Report.

The author biography is an impressive read and we should do all we can to publicise and share it with our politicians and their advisers. The report concludes, “Despite six IPCC reports, 28 COP meetings, hundreds of other reports, and tens of thousands of scientific papers, the world has made only very minor headway on climate change, in part because of stiff resistance from those benefiting financially from the current fossil-fuel based system.”

While the latter is true of Australia, a petrostate suffering from “Dutch disease”, we must not lose sight of recent gains under a Labor government accountable to Greens and Independents. These gains include vehicle emissions standards, binding carbon emission reduction caps on Australia’s largest 100 emitters, and redesigning the national electricity market.

And according to the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2024 report, Australia leads in reducing its use of unabated fossil fuels and its increase in clean power, at double the pace of the EU, the US and the UK.

As Cribb explains, global progress is inadequate, but under a Coalition government, Australia would not even have a 2030 emissions target.

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