PLEA Network

22 April 2021, Renew Economy: No, Australia isn’t beating other countries on climate. A major component of Australia’s efforts to paper over its serious climate inaction on the world stage has been spurious comparisons of historical emissions and climate targets with other comparable countries. Generally, this has taken the form of ‘per capita’ comparisons. But the current form is even more baffling and weird, and it’s being repeated endlessly through media outlets with almost no scrutiny of the claim. What they claim: At Monday’s ‘Business Council of Australia’ (BCA) dinner, the inner city dinner party at which he announced ‘net zero won’t be solved at inner city dinner parties’, PM Scott Morrison said this: “Already total emissions in Australia are 19 per cent lower at the end of 2020 than they were in 2005. 19 per cent. That’s a further improvement on the 13 per cent reduction by 2018. How does that compare? Well in Canada it was zero, in New Zealand it was eight (sic: 1%) per cent, and Germany, Japan and the United States it was 10 per cent over that same period. So don’t let it be said by those who want to talk Australia down in what we’re doing on emissions that we’re not carrying our load. We are, and we are leading the way. Our domestic emissions have already fallen by 36% from 2005 levels. That sounds to me like Australia doing its heavy lifting in our part of the world” It’s so confusing. Has Australia reduced emissions by 19% or 36%? (It’s neither, but we’ll get to that). Read more here