International peers say Australia will 'fall short' on climate action   

30 January 2019
The Age


Australia’s international peers say its emissions reduction efforts have become derailed and rising carbon pollution levels are bucking the trend set by other rich nations, in a withering assessment of the Morrison government's climate and energy policies months out from the federal election.

The report card by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development adds to a chorus of authoritative bodies challenging Coalition claims that Australia will easily meet the Paris climate targets, and follows a string of record-high summer temperatures that have raised public concern over climate change.


Scientists have linked heatwaves and bushfires to climate change.

However Environment Minister Melissa Price sought to play down the report's findings and said her government had "the right mix of policies in place to meet our [climate] targets".

The OECD is a group of 36 democratic nations with market economies that work to promote economic growth and sustainable development.


The review said Australia is uniquely vulnerable to climate change, harbours a large proportion of the Earth’s species and is a major greenhouse gas emitter compared to other comparable nations – meaning a long-term strategy to decarbonise the economy was critical.

Under the Paris agreement Australia has pledged to reduce its carbon emissions by at least 26 per cent, based on 2005 levels, by 2030. The Morrison government repeatedly says this goal will be met "in a canter".

However the OECD said while Australia was on track to meet its 2020 target, emissions have risen since 2005 and the nation must "intensify efforts" to reach the 2030 goal.

In a separate statement it said Australia has made some progress replacing coal with gas and renewables for electricity generation, but "remains one of the most carbon-intensive OECD countries and one of the few where greenhouse gas emissions (excluding land use and forestry) have risen in the past decade".

"The country will fall short of its 2030 emissions target without a major effort to move to a low-carbon model," it said.   

"Australia should consider pricing carbon emissions more effectively and doing more to integrate renewables into the electricity sector."

The OECD said Australia relies on coal for two-thirds of its electricity and "has one of the highest levels of non-renewable energy use of advanced economies".


Australia is still heavily reliant on coal, despite the transition to renewables and gas, the OECD said.

Fossil fuel consumption still benefited from government support and the most polluting sector of the economy, energy production, "is not subject to emission reduction constraints".

The government scrapped Labor’s carbon price regime when it took office and last year dumped an emissions reduction target from the National Energy Guarantee. It will discontinue the renewable energy target and has not produced reforms for vehicle emissions and fuel standards, despite formally examining the issue for four years. It also appears to have shelved plans for road user pricing.

The government says it is acting on climate change, pointing to policies such as the emissions reduction fund, the renewable energy target and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

But the OECD described this approach as “piecemeal” and called on Australia to integrate energy and climate policy and set an emissions reduction goal for the power sector – the pursuit of which has been a major source of political warring in Australia for more than a decade.

The expected contribution of each sector to achieving climate goals should also be identified, the report said.

Labor has proposed a 45 per cent economy-wide emissions reduction target by 2030 and would revive the National Energy Guarantee. However the government says the plan would harm the economy and has called on Labor to outline how it will cut pollution from sectors such as transport and agriculture.

Environment Minister Melissa Price said official emissions projections show "progress continues to be made to meet the 2030 [Paris] target".


The OECD said Australia had a poor record on threatened species. Pictured: the endangered corroboree frog

"As the 2017 review of climate change policies highlighted, we have the right mix of policies in place to meet our targets and our policies are scalable," she said.

The OECD also assessed Australia’s record on protecting threatened species, saying “the status of biodiversity is poor and worsening”.   

The government has plans to arrest population decline in less than 40 per cent of nationally listed threatened species, and where plans existed, implementation was "constrained by a lack of financing and weak co-ordination".

The review called on the government to increase funding for research, protection and restoration "to address the scale of the challenge".

We all need to do our part. There is only one planet that we all share.

Per capita, we are one of the highest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.

Take it as read that my reply will always be the same to you Lee ... You're an AGW denier who is a complete anti-science nong.

You can do me a favor Lee ... at the end of every post you make, write that Nemo reckon's Lee's an anti-science nong and dunce.



That will save me from a lot of typing. 

If all the village idiots from all the villages decided to leave their villages and form their own village, of idiots, you would be that village's village idiot.