Bushfires in Australia. Photo:Getty
By Patryk Krych | The World Daily | APRIL 24th 2021
Green groups have gotten involved in the arguments against Australia to make the country take on harder, more challenging climate goals as the US makes promises to toughen their own goals by halving their emissions by 2030.
Whilst addressing the global climate summit, in which the US had announced their own new ambitious climate goals, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison had stated that the country was well on its own path towards achieving net zero emissions.
Despite these claims, Morrison refused to give any sort of timeline or clear targets as to when this will happen, instead opting to confide that Australia will reach net zero emissions “as soon as possible.”
“Our goal is to get there as soon as we possibly can, through technology that enables and transforms our industries, not taxes that eliminate them and the jobs and livelihoods they support and create,” Morrison said at the summit. “Future generations... will thank us not for what we have promised, but what we deliver.”
On Friday, some industry and green groups had called on the Australian government to step up their game and put down some real targets for their emission goals, shortly after the announcement at the summit by US President Joe Biden. The introduction of a real date goal is important for the country, considering its role as one of the biggest carbon emitters in the world.
“To get to 45-50% by 2030 you need a pathway to get there. The UK are already a demonstration case about how you go about doing that without wrecking the economy,” said the deputy director of Melbourne Climate Futures at the University of Melbourne, Ben Neville.
Morrison said that Australia has the highest uptake of solar panels out of any country in the world, and that it is deploying renewable energy at a rate of 10 times faster too. Along with this came the promise that Australia would be committing $20 billion “to achieve ambitious goals that will bring the cost of clean hydrogen, green steel, energy storage and carbon capture to commercial parity.”
He added: “You can always be sure that the commitments Australia makes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are bankable.”
