After previously declaring it would not contribute to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), Foreign Minister Julie Bishop announced yesterday that Australia would (after all) contribute $200 million over four years. This money will come out of Australia’s recently diminished aid budget and is therefore not “new and additional” to the government’s supposed Millennium Goals commitment to provide 0.7% of gross national income towards overseas development assistance. It also compares unfavourably to the Labor government’s contribution of $500 million to “fast start” climate finance in 2012.
Nonetheless, it is a welcome announcement that prevented Australia’s climate reputation from hitting rock bottom. It will keep Australia on the Green Climate Fund Board. The announcement was also cunningly timed. Australia’s modest contribution of $200 million was the final one that brought the fund over the much desired $10 billion mark (on top of, for example, Japan’s US$1.5 billion). Thank you, Australia, for providing the last straw.
The climate finance contributions announced by Australia and other countries at the Lima conference are merely part of an ongoing collective effort by developed countries to raise at least $100 billion by 2020 to help poorer countries pursue decarbonisation and adapt to the unavoidable impacts of climate change. These are the countries that have contributed least to the problem of climate change and expected to suffer the most from harmful impacts.
Meanwhile, Bishop and Trade Minister Andrew Robb have been engaged in bilaterals with other parties, including the United States and China, explaining Australia’s position.
Today, Bishop announced this position publicly in another — albeit very short — statement in the plenary session. She declared that Australia supported a strong and effective treaty but it must not hamper economic growth. She also announced that Australia wanted the Paris agreement to move beyond the rigid binary between developed and developing countries towards a more level playing field. Predictably, she defended the government’s Direct Action plan and declared that Australia had an ambitious 2020 target and that its actions were comparable with those other developed countries.
Most delegates and observers at the negotiations would beg to differ. Indeed, Germanwatch’s Climate Performance Index of 2014 ranked Australia 57th out of 58 OECD countries (Canada was 58, Denmark headed the list at No. 4, and no countries were awarded first, second or third place). At the time of writing, Australia also tops the league ladder of Climate Action Network’s daily “Fossil of the Day” award by a long stretch.
In her plenary appearance, Bishop also announced that Australia had established a prime ministerial taskforce to prepare Australia’s “nationally determined contribution” towards the collective mitigation effort for the post-2020 period. This will be made known by mid-2015, bucking the expectation that they be provided no later than first quarter of 2015.
It is clear that the main focus of this taskforce will be on what Australia’s trading partners are doing rather than on the science of climate change, the recommendations of the Climate Change Authority or what might be a fair contribution for a rich country that is making a major contribution to the problem of climate change.
Enter Robb, who had already declared yesterday that Australia would not sign up to a new climate agreement in Paris if it would put Australia at a disadvantage to its trade competitors.
More fundamentally, Australia has questioned the goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, which is included in the draft negotiating text of the new agreement. Indeed, Bishop made it clear yesterday that she was nonplussed as to why anyone would want a fossil fuel-free world by 2050.
In short, Australia sees climate leadership as a sucker’s game and climate laggardship as the smart way to operate because it believes that fossil fuels are here to stay. These are very unsafe assumptions that risk not only Australia’s international reputation but also its long-term prosperity. If only Australia would look over the horizon and see what is coming: either dangerous climate change, for which we are poorly prepared, or a world that will become increasingly disinclined to buy our fossil fuel exports, which will leave us economically stranded.
Meanwhile, all eyes are tracking the draft COP decision proposed by the co-chairs, which will be worked over by ministers over the next two to three days to produce the final decision of the conference. The much longer draft negotiating text of the Paris agreement will remain a work in progress until it is finalised at COP21 in Paris at the end of 2015. However, it is hoped that the ministers will find ways of narrowing the differences in the negotiating text, particularly over the major sticking points of differentiated responsibilities, and the legal form in which the party’s “intended nationally determined contributions” are expressed.
However, there is one thing about which there is deep agreement among most of the negotiators, and that is the remarkably soothing effects of a Peruvian cocktail called a pisco sour, which is available in the corridors. Let’s hope it brings the negotiators together in the final hour.
34 thoughts on “Australia’s piddling Climate Fund pledge leaves sour taste in Lima”
wayne robinson
December 12, 2014 at 3:11 pmNorman,
You’re right. Some Australian governments sell out their citizens to faux progressive collectives more frequently than others. They tend to be conservative ones, who have pandering to authority figures in their political DNA.
The prize committees of the Nobel Prize do effectively have ‘places’. Each member votes for a candidate based on subjective grounds. If the deliberations of the various committees were ever released, then there would be places, based upon the number of votes.
The Germanwatch index is just as subjective as any Nobel Prize, even in ‘hard’ areas such as physics. The only difference is that the Nobel Prize has considerable prestige, despite awarding prizes for work that didn’t deserve it (including awarding Enrico Fermi his prize, probably for political reasons, in 1938), and the Germanwatch index has negligible prestige, if at all.
BSA Bob
December 12, 2014 at 3:42 pmAbbott’s just snaffled a few bucks from a nearby funding source to buy his way out of negative coverage, principally at home where it counts. And, laughably, now giving him & his prospective challenger the right to lecture others. At least in Murdochworld.
Scott
December 12, 2014 at 4:17 pm@Wayne Robinson
The last time the Nobel Prize for Physics was not awarded was over 70 years ago in 1942, when no Nobel Prize for any discipline was awarded due to the war.
GermanWatch has no such excuse.
wayne robinson
December 12, 2014 at 7:37 pmScott,
So what? Germanwatch doesn’t have the prestige of the Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize has considerable prestige, but that hasn’t stopped them awarding prizes for subjective and even political reasons. Such as Enrico Fermi’s award.
There’s no ‘accurate index’ of performance because the weighing of the various factors in determining an index is subjective.
It’s similar to the liveability indices of cities which paradoxically put Melbourne high in the list (there are many cities I’d prefer to live in – but I’d certainly prefer not to live in any of the cities at the bottom of the list).
Germanwatch in putting Australia bottom of the list was correct though. Direct Action is just a joke.
Scott
December 12, 2014 at 10:11 pmThe livability index doesnt leave the first three places blank.
As for your issues with Fermi…not sure what is going on there. Italians cant do physics?
He was one of the greats, mentioned alongside bohrs, rutherford, tellar and the like. You can argue his position amongst the elite, but not his membership.
wayne robinson
December 12, 2014 at 10:36 pmScott,
The reason why Germanwatch leaves the first three places blank is because the authors have decided that if all the heavy CO2 emitters perform as well as Denmark, then they don’t think that the world would avoid dangerous global warming. They think that Demmark isn’t performing well enough, even though they are doing better than anyone else.
You might disagree with them, but their rationale is given in their report, if you’d bother to read it.
It’s similar to the Nobel Prize committee refusing to award a prize in a given year if they consider that none of the candidates are worthy enough.
Fermi got his Nobel Prize for the discovery of elements which didn’t actually exist. The Nobel Prizes, with the exception of the one for literature, are awarded for specific pieces of work. Einstein got his for the explanation of the photovoltaic effect, dating from 1905, not for general relativity, which was a greater discovery.
Agreed. Fermi was one of the greats in physics. His Nobel Prize was awarded to him, perhaps, for political reasons, to allow him to flee Europe before WWII. But the Nobel Prize isn’t a popularity contest. It’s awarded for specific discoveries. Which is the reason no one would be able to cite any work Penzias or Wilson did before or after their award winning work. And their discovery wasn’t new. Other scientists had made the same discovery, but didn’t have the advantage that they had someone to explain to them the significance of their discovery.
wayne robinson
December 12, 2014 at 11:05 pmScott,
I was also going to note that Edward Teller wasn’t one of the ‘greats’ in physics, considering him generally a nasty piece of work, but I’ve just read that he was one of the first scientists, in 1957 even, to warn about the dangers of human caused increased atmospheric CO2 as a result of the burning of fossil fuels, so now I obviously (?) agree that he was a ‘great’.
drsmithy
December 12, 2014 at 11:32 pmSurely the fact that no country was first, second or third, means that this list is political in nature, rather than an accurate index of performance. Someone has to be first, even if you don’t think it’s enough.
Yep, you have to mark everyone to a curve. Even if the best result on the exam is only 10/50, they still deserve an ‘A’.
Right ?
Murray Coles
December 13, 2014 at 3:41 amNorman Hanscombe wrote:
“The day the international community looks like being able to establish an effective enforceable International Agreement in relation to this issue…”
That might be a fair comment, if it weren’t a day that the likes of Norman Hanscombe are doing their best to delay.
Norman Hanscombe
December 13, 2014 at 8:35 amMurray, I didn’t start raising these issues formally until the 1960s with motions to the NSW ALP State Conference which were ignored.
Until meaningful agreements are reached, I’ll keep trying even if Johnny Come Late-lies criticise my posts.