Zero Credibility

By aiming for zero emissions by 2050, Labor under Anthony Albanese is alienating the majority of voters, who simply want pragmatic policies to deal with climate. By Nick Cater.

The ALP fails to draw the lessons of its past mistakes. If Anthony Albanese thinks his party is in Opposition because its climate policy at the election was too tame he has yet to absorb the message from Labor's own post-election inquiry. 

The report by Craig Emerson and Jay Weatherill flagged climate policy as one of Labor's biggest election negatives. Its failure to cost its policy cost votes, particularly in Queensland where Labor's primary vote fell below 30 per cent.

Albanese's decision to double down on its 45 per cent emissions reduction by 2030 target by setting a net zero-emission target by 2050 is a decision it will almost certainly regret.

A policy is more than just a bright idea; it demands a strategy to put it into action. It requires acceptance of real-world constraints, like the imperfect state of technology and the cost. Labor's policy considers neither.

It is a zero-emissions policy with zero credibility.

Leading climate economist Brian Fisher last year calculated the net cost of Labor's 45 per cent target by 2030 at 335,000 fewer jobs, a cumulatively cost of $472 billion to gross national product, and wages 8 per cent lower than would otherwise be the case.

The cost of this new program will be considerably higher without a breakthrough in technology, which by its nature is unknown.

It requires a 2030 target much higher than the 26 percent reduction on 2005 emissions we are on course to achieve in fulfilment of our Paris commitments.

A plan that tried to leave the heavy lifting until after 2030 would be blatantly dishonest.

Let us be clear on one matter: It is not, as Labor will no doubt pretend, a choice between taking action on climate change or sitting on one's hands. That debate effectively closed a decade and a half ago.

It is a choice between managing emissions through marketable innovations on the one hand, and blind panic on the other.

The task Labor intends to set for the nation would cripple the economy, cost jobs and cut into wages. Net zero emissions means that all man-made greenhouse gas emissions must be removed from the atmosphere through reduction measures.

All transport, both land and air, all electricity generation, all agriculture and all emissions associated with industry must stop or be removed or otherwise accounted for through the purchase of offsets.

None of this is accounted for in Albanese's policy announcement on Friday.

It is a target set arbitrarily without reference to either economics or science. Insofar as it has grounding at all, it is grounded in a meme, that Australia must follow the rest of the world or risk shameful consequences.

This is simply untrue. None of the world’s largest emitters – China, the United States and India – have made any zero-carbon commitments.

New Zealand's claim of a net zero by 2050 is a target that shelves the hard stuff. It excludes agriculture, the source of 34 per cent of its emissions. 

The EU's zero emissions target excludes Poland, the largest coal producer in the EU, and around 60 per cent of its energy comes from burning coal.

The zero emission ambition stems from frustration in the climate movement at the gap between ambition and action. Having nailed their hopes to an international agreement, the realisation has dawned that the UN process is not working.

At the UN Copenhagen Climate Change Conference we were told that global emissions would need to peak by 2020 if we were to have any hope of stopping the planet warming more than 2 degrees. 

Today there is little sign of that, despite the valiant efforts of industrialised countries to shrink their carbon footprints. The trajectory of emissions was locked in years ago when it was decided that China and India should get a leave pass until 2030.

Sadly the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has proved to be as successful as every other international body set up to solve a global problem.

One hesitates to talk about the spectre of the 1930s, but the current moment brings to mind the Italian invasion of Abyssinia when the realisation began to dawn that the League of Nations would not prevent war.

Until that point, substantial figures, mainly on the left but not exclusively so, harboured hopes that the emergence of the League after the 1920 Paris Peace Conference would ensure peace. Its failure to deter Mussolini's act of aggression and its failure to persuade Italian force to withdraw was the turning point. The incident bought home that the League would be worse than useless if ever called to put Hitler back in his box.

The IPCC would have become a former international climate body by now were it not for its own bureaucratic momentum, driven by forces beyond democratic control.

Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris agreement, even though the US was on track to meet its targets anyway thanks to the miracle of fracking, should have been the final indignity.

Instead, however, countries like the US and Australia have become the scapegoats for activist campaigns that might have been better directed at China, which is now responsible for more than a quarter of the world's emissions.

The de-industrialisation of developed economies has done little to reduce global emissions, it has simply shuffled them off to China and other developing economies where they carry no cost.

A draconian zero-emissions target here would continue that process by default.

The political consequences of Labor's proposal will be hard to manage. The policy may help to reduce the threat from the resurgent Greens in a handful of inner-urban seats.

It will increase the party's popularity among young, university educated voters, particularly women, where global warming is the dominant political paradigm.

Meanwhile Labor will lose support in much of the rest of the country, particularly those in the 55-plus bracket which, inconveniently for Labor, is the fastest growing demographic cohort in the country.

The task for the Coalition is to stick to its principles. Climate change should continue to be treated as an economic issue, not a forum for exhibiting false virtue, engendering false hopes built on faulty assumptions in the pursuit of false dreams.