Hypocritical Nationals holdouts are exposing regional Australia to risk and robbing it of opportunity in the green industries that are coming.
Politicians like to pass laws to regulate markets. But at the Glasgow meeting of the parties to the Paris Agreement on climate change it will be markets that regulate politicians.
Issuing press releases at the meeting’s end, not backed by decisive policies, won’t save the planet. Nor will it satisfy global financial markets.
Countries that refuse to commit persuasively to urgent and effective action against climate change at Glasgow will be penalised with an inability to access global capital at reasonable cost.
Based on the stated policies of parties to the Paris Agreement, together with initiatives officially under development, International Energy Agency (IEA) modelling suggests that the average global temperature rise above pre-industrial levels would pass 1.5°C around 2030 and reach 2.6°C in 2100.
That’s an ecological and humanitarian disaster.
Even if the pledges of more than 50 countries and the European Union in the run-up to the Glasgow meeting were all implemented, IEA modelling suggests the global average temperature rise in 2100 would still be around 2.1°C.
And by 2100, zero net emissions would not be achieved, causing temperatures to continue rising during the next century.
While 137 countries have made fine-sounding commitments to zero net emissions, the leaders of many have done little more than deliver a speech or issue a media release.
Yet far from viewing the necessary clean energy transition as an economic catastrophe, the IEA sees it generating “huge opportunities”– what it describes as a new global energy economy with the potential to create millions of decent jobs.
But the IEA warns: “To make this a reality, government leaders in Glasgow must play their part by making the 2020s a decade of massive clean energy deployment.”
That’s the clean energy deployment that the holdout Nationals in the Coalition party room oppose.
It’s the clean energy deployment that Australia’s Prime Minister warned during the 2019 election campaign would wreck the economy.
It’s the clean energy deployment that the Prime Minister claimed would oblige Aussies to buy electric vehicles that won’t tow your trailer or your boat and will put an end to the great Aussie weekend.
Never mind that many of the world’s carmakers have announced they won’t be producing internal combustion engine cars beyond 2035.
Now, mugged by political and market realities, Australia’s Prime Minister has undergone a conversion on the road to Glasgow.
Matthew castigated hypocrites: “In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but, on the inside, you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”
If Prime Minister Morrison’s conversion from exalting a lump of coal in the Australian parliament is to be anointed, he must persuade the hypocrites within the Nationals to take the journey with him.
Wouldn’t you think these Nationals would warmly welcome the development of clean energy zones creating new, lasting jobs in Gladstone, in other parts of regional Queensland and in Victoria and the Hunter Valley?
These same holdout Nationals oppose carbon storage against the wishes of the National Farmers Federation.
If these Nationals truly represented their brethren, they would welcome the Clean Energy Regulator creating an Australian Carbon Exchange for Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs).
The Australian Carbon Exchange will support the surging demand for ACCUs from corporations that are committing to zero net emissions.
It is this burgeoning corporate demand for ACCUs that has been driving up their price – from $16.75 to more than $30.00 in just 10 months.
Carbon avoidance in return for valuable ACCUs is a massive new opportunity for rural and remote Australia.
Indeed, Indigenous communities in northern Australia are creating a premium price on the ACCUs they generate from savannah burning in the cooler season, avoiding hot fires that emit massive amounts of carbon in the dry season.
Some of these communities are using profits from their projects to revitalise schools in remote areas, lifting attendance by their children.
On other parts of the continent, ACCUs are set to command a premium where revegetation restores biodiversity, as sought by the National Farmers Federation https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/australian-farmers-don-t-want-another-sleazy-climate-deal-20211014-p58zwi
The holdout Nationals’ sellout extends to Australians living in country towns and regional centres. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and the Reserve Bank have warned that by refusing to commit to zero net emissions by 2050 Australia would face higher borrowing costs.
Are these Nationals so out of touch with their constituents that they are oblivious to the fact that farmers, small business owners and township homeowners in their electorates would endure higher interest rates if they were to succeed in thwarting a commitment to zero net emissions by 2050?
Perhaps they see themselves as representing coal-mining communities at the expense of farmers. Some have said as much. But it will be the commercial decisions of coal-importing countries such as China, Japan and Korea that determine coal demand, not foot stamping by Australian politicians.
These holdout Nationals want to lock their constituents out of the nation’s renewable energy future and carbon storage opportunities. If they were to succeed, global financial markets would make their judgement, imposing a bleak future on rural and regional Australia.
Craig Emerson is managing director of Emerson Economics. He is a distinguished fellow at the ANU, director of the APEC Study Centre at RMIT and adjunct professor at Victoria University’s College of Business.