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The United Nations climate change negotiations taking place in Warsaw have been trivially described as a “stepping stone” towards the next big global deal to cut emissions which, some hope, will be greeted with a giant rubber stamp in Paris in 2015.

But stepping stones can be slippery buggers – a careless stride, a bad choice of footwear or a shove from a mischievous co-traveller and you’re in the rushing rapids either to sink without trace or to desperately grab for the nearest immoveable object.

And so it is with the Warsaw talks. Unless the stepping stones are carefully negotiated then the risk of Paris turning into some kind of “Copenhagen II: Failure Strikes Back” will look increasingly likely.

But as Australia joins the 190-plus other countries navigating the climate stepping stones, it’s hard to know whether the Aussies are wearing rubber thongs (those are flip-flops to foreigners) or appropriately stout walking boots. Australia may even be readying its elbows to nudge a few people off balance.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has decided his government will not be sending any ministers to Poland’s capital, leaving the job of negotiating instead to a diplomat – the experienced Justin Lee, the country’s climate change ambassador.

Many have seen the decision as a reflection of the Abbott Government’s antipathy towards genuine climate change action. Reports suggest that Abbott has also ruled out Australian support  to financially compensate poorer countries for the climate change impacts.

Question marks on climate policy

Back in Canberra, the future for domestic climate change and renewable energy policy has got more question marks over it than the Riddler’s wardrobe collection.

The chief reason for Australia’s politician-free delegation, is that Mr Abbott’s cabinet, including his Environment Minister Greg Hunt, are busy trying to push through laws to repeal the country’s carbon price legislation and replace it with a “direct action plan”.

Instead of charging the polluters such as coal-fired power generators a market-set price for their emissions and then spending that money on tax cuts and clean energy funding, “direct action” will spend $3.2 billion from taxpayer funds on projects that will help lower emissions.

The Abbott Government says it is confident the policy will deliver its promised cut of five per cent on Australia’s emissions by 2020 (from the 2000 baseline), but two studies have suggested a few billion more would need to be spent.  Mr Abbott says no more money will be spent, which means the emissions promise will slide.

Climate Action Tracker – a team of scientists and analysts who monitor the impacts of policies on emissions and global warming – reported yesterday from Warsaw that the Abbott Government’s plans would see Australia’s emissions rise by 12 per cent by 2020.

This, the report said, was “consistent with a global pathway heading to temperature rises of 3.5 – 4C”. The report doesn’t count Australia’s greatest contribution to the climate problem – all the coal and gas which it drills, mines and exports – but then neither does the government.

As I discussed on Planet Oz a few days ago, just two recently approved coal mines in Queensland will emit 3.7 billion tonnes of CO2-e over their proposed 30-year life spans – the equivalent of six years worth of the United Kingdom’s greenhouse gas footprint.

Since being elected in September, the Abbott Government has also defunded its independent Climate Commission (which has re-emerged as the not-for-profit Climate Council), scrubbed the climate change department and slashed about $700 million from an agency to fund renewable energy research, development and deployment.

Mr Abbott has also backed away from more ambitious targets in the future “in the absence of very serious like binding commitments from other countries” which, in reality, is practically the same position taken by the previous government.

In signing the Copenhagen Accord, Australia also stands with 140 other countries in agreeing that global warming should be kept below 2C, even though current pledges make achieving this goal unlikely.

Last December, Australia announced it had signed up for the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol where the five per cent cut sits alongside pledges from the rest of the world.  This second stage started in January and will end in 2020, and commits Australia to cutting emissions to 99.5 per cent from their levels in 1990 (consistent with a five per cent cut with a baseline set at 2000).

This is a target which a review from the country’s Climate Change Authority, tasked by the previous government to advise on targets, described as “not credible”. The CCA will soon be abolished. Yet even this “not credible” target looks credible compared to the remarkable target Australia managed to squeeze from the first incarnation of the Kyoto Protocol.

Back in 1997, Australia’s delegation pulled what they saw as a masterstroke during post-midnight negotiations on the final day in Japan. Australia insisted on the inclusion of what later became known as the “Australia clause” – a clause which allowed countries with high emissions from land clearing to include those in their greenhouse gas accounts for the year 1990.

This was significant because 1990 was the baseline year for calculating emissions targets. The Australian delegation knew that the country’s emissions from land clearing dropped dramatically post-1990. This meant that reaching the agreed target of “cutting” emissions by 108% by 2008 to 2012 was, in effect, effortless.

Shadow environment minister at the time, Duncan Kerr, reportedly compared the “challenge” for Australia as being like a “three inch putt” in golf.

Warsaw’s key aims

But back to Warsaw (where I’ll be next week), where the main objective will be to set negotiations rolling towards a new agreement to be signed in 2015 and to take effect in 2020 when Kyoto runs out.

Countries won’t be asked to lay down targets in Poland (this could come at a meeting of world leaders called by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for next year) but negotiators will look to develop a methodology that can be used to decide a fair way to calculate future cuts for individual countries.

Alongside this, negotiators will also be looking to progress on a negotiating track known as “loss and damage” where developing countries (in particular small island states and countries such as the typhoon-ravaged Philippines) are compensated for climate change impacts.

If recent reports are to be believed, poorer countries around the world will get little sympathy from Australia, one of the world’s biggest coal exporters and where per capita emissions are among the highest on the planet.

Rhetoric sours on climate

In a report in The Australian newspaper, the Abbott Government is said to have already decided that it will not contribute money to any “wealth transfer” proposals being discussed in Warsaw.

Mr Abbott has described such measures as “socialism masquerading as environmentalism“. As for carbon markets, Mr Abbott says they area “a so-called market, in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no one.”

Mr Abbott also denies a quarter of a century of science showing the link between global warming and the increased risk of bushfire in Australia, as does his environment minister Greg Hunt.

When Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said there was a clear link between climate change and bush fires, Mr Abbott said she was “talking through her hat“.

I’m sure that In Warsaw, this negative rhetoric is going down like a thong-wearing Australian crossing a wet algae-covered stepping stone in a cyclone.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.CREDIT: Associated Press

In Australia, temperatures are on track for the hottest year on record. But observing the government’s recent actions and rhetoric on climate change gives another impression entirely.

Tony Abbott, the staunchly conservative Prime Minister, had an anti-climate agenda throughout his campaign over the summer. Since being elected in early September he has shown every indicator of following through with vows to scrap the country’s hard-won carbon emissions scheme. Then last week he seemingly shunned the UN climate talks, COP19 in Warsaw, by opting not to send a senior elected member of his government — a move that appears purely domestically motivated with little regard for the dire need of international cooperation in confronting climate change.

Delegates felt similarly about Abbott’s decision, and when Australia further revealed that it would not be putting any new finance commitments towards action on climate mitigation and adaptation programs in third world and developing countries, the country was duly awarded the conference’s very first Fossil of the Day award. The award signifies Australia’s seeming lack of understanding and sense of purpose around the climate talks. The decision was especially salient in the wake of the current tragedy unfolding in the Philippines after the devastating and record-breaking Super Typhoon Haiyan and emotional plea for action on climate change from Philippine representative Naderev “Yeb” Saño at the COP19.

This week Abbott continued his anti-climate crusade back home by abandoning Australia’s long-held emissions reduction target, taking further steps toward repealing the carbon emissions trading scheme, and even slashing funding for renewable energy.

Speaking on Wednesday evening, after introducing eight bills that attempt to dismantle the carbon emissions scheme, Abbott confirmed that his government had no intention of reducing Australia’s emissions by more than five percent below 2000 levels by 2020.

“We accept that climate change happens, that mankind, humanity, makes a contribution to it and it’s important that we take strong and effective action against it,” Abbott said. “This government has made no commitments to go further than that [five percent] and we certainly want to get emissions down as far as we reasonably can. But we are certainly in no way looking to make further binding commitments in the absence of very serious like-binding commitments in other countries and there’s no evidence of that.”

A recent report by the Climate Change Authority — the independent advisory body set up by the former Labor government — found that the Abbott-led Coalition’s own agreed conditions for a tougher emissions target have been met and that the five percent target will leave Australia facing a near-impossible emissions reduction task after 2020.

In response to Abbott’s recent moves, John Connor, CEO at the Climate Institute in Australia, said “Other countries aren’t waiting for binding international commitments to reduce pollution and invest in low carbon technologies — they are moving forward on their own accord. Australia has made international commitments to act in light with action of other countries. But our current action, and even five percent reductions, is inadequate when compared to countries like the US and China.”

Along with emissions reductions targets, renewable energy funding is also getting cut. The details of the Abbott government’s carbon tax repeal legislation revealed that funding for Australia’s AU$3 billion renewable energy agency will be cut by AU$435 million, a nearly 15 percent reduction.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), from which the cuts will come, was set up to fund renewable energy projects and research. According to RenewEconomy, while the funding for this year is maintained, the funding for the next two years is barely one fifth of what is was originally meant to be.

The Clean Energy Council believes that deprivation of funds will hurt both the development of key technologies such as large-scale solar as well as emerging technologies such as solar thermal, marine energy, geothermal, and energy storage.

“The proposed changes to ARENA’s funding would mean that many renewable energy companies will consider moving off-shore where support for renewable energy innovation is both stronger and more stable,” deputy CEO Kane Thornton said in a statement.

The Abbott government favors a “direct action” plan over the current carbon emissions scheme, or carbon tax. Direct action includes an incentive fund to pay companies to increase energy efficiency along with other measures such as planting trees.

John Grimes, Chief Executive of the Australian Solar Council, told Solar Novus Today that he thinks the work that ARENA does is an excellent example of Direct Action.

“The solar industry takes the government at its word when it says it is committed to tackling climate change and supporting the renewable energy industry in Australia but so far we have only seen one half of the equation — the cuts. Where are the government’s positive policies for direct action on climate change?” Grimes said.

While most countries observe the Australian government’s recent anti-climate agenda and posturing both domestically and internationally with dismay, the Canadian government, led by Conservative PM Stephen Harper, applauded Abbott’s move to axe the carbon tax.

Like Abbott, Harper has secured power by catering to fossil-fuel interests and resisting any action the could potentially harm industry growth by limiting emissions in an effort to confront climate change.

“Canada applauds the decision by Prime Minister Abbott to introduce legislation to repeal Australia’s carbon tax,” Paul Calandra, Parliamentary Secretary to Harper, said in a statement. “The Australian Prime Minister’s decision will be noticed around the world and sends an important message.”

• Climate Science
• Instrumental Record

— stefan @ 13 November 2013