Australia's Copenhagen climate strategy is smoke and mirrors

Australian PM Kevin Rudd talks a good climate game, offering 25% emissions cuts. But do the numbers add up?

Fred Pearce
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 November 2009 07.00 GMT
This may seem churlish in the week when the Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, is doing a deal with the opposition to get climate change legislation through the Senate. After all, that puts him one step ahead of Barack Obama.
But it has to be said: Australia has had a ridiculously easy ride on climate change so far. And, whatever Rudd's domestic green credentials, he seems intent on continuing as before. For when Rudd shows up in Copenhagen in a couple of weeks, he will bring a negotiating position almost certain to ensure that, while others make cuts, Australia's emissions remain above 1990 levels until at least 2020.
Australia got lucky in Kyoto back in 1997. I wrote afterwards in New Scientist magazine:
"Australia, which threatened not to accept any limit on its emissions, was made an offer too good to refuse. First came a licence to increase its emissions by 8%. Then, in the final hours, it won an amendment that allows it to benefit massively from past deforestation… Up to 30% of its CO2 emissions in 1990, the baseline date for the targets, were from deforestation. But far from being penalised for this, Australia won the right to count any improvement from this position as a carbon credit. It just has to make sure it doesn't cut down quite as many."
And that is what has happened. Aussies offset rising emissions from cars and power stations by reducing their deforestation, in Queensland and New South Wales in particular. In fact, even before signing in Kyoto, Australia had cut back deforestation emissions from 131m tonnes in 1990 to 75m tonnes. It was, according to an analysis carried out by the Sustainability Council of New Zealand, "the equivalent of Australia starting with an 11% discount on its Kyoto target."
But the story of Australia's emissions without forests – what carbon counters term its "gross emissions" – has been very different. UN statistics today show that gross emissions rose by 30% between 1990 and 2007. Among developed countries, that figure is exceeded only by Spain, Portugal and Iceland.
Some other countries besides Australia had a head's start in meeting Kyoto targets. In Britain, for instance, Margaret Thatcher spent the 1990s shutting down the coal industry for reasons that had little to do with climate change. But many of those countries accepted tougher emissions targets in recognition of that head start. Under a deal with the rest of the European Union, Britain agreed to national cuts of 12.5%.
But Australia has simply milked its good luck, carrying on largely as if Kyoto never happened. As a result, today it has the highest per capita emissions of greenhouse gases of any major developed nation.
In response, a spokesperson for the Australian government said: "Australia does not accept that our base year emissions [1990] are 'inflated'… Deforestation emissions from the Australian continent are a significant part of the national emissions profile. The large reduction in [Australian] deforestation emissions that resulted [from the Kyoto protocol] provides a lesson on the value of international agreement on deforestation emissions."
But since Australia is the world's hottest and driest continent, it is potentially more vulnerable to climate change than any other. That suggests another path would be prudent. And, to be fair, Rudd is aware of that. But he has a tough task persuading his industrialists and hugely powerful coal industry (Australia is the world's largest exporter of coal.)
So what is Australia bringing to Copenhagen? Rudd will be there in person. His headline grabber is the offer of a 25% cut in emissions. Except that the "conditions" he sets the rest of the world for this are so stringent that he is unlikely to have to deliver.
For instance, as the government spokesperson said, it would only be "fair" for Australia to make cuts that deep if other "advanced" countries made cuts "in the middle of the range identified by the IPCC" – that is, between 25-40%.
That's an odd definition of fairness. It is based, according to the spokesperson, on the fact that "Australia faces higher economic costs to achieve equivalent emissions reductions… than most other advanced countries." Funny, but I don't remember Australia offering bigger cuts in Kyoto because it was cheap and easy to end deforestation. Quite the contrary.
Otherwise, Rudd offers a range of reductions from 5-15%. That doesn't sound too bad until you remember the deforestation discount that Australia won in Kyoto. Along with other land-use changes since then, even a 15% "cut" would still allow Australians to emit more from burning coal in power stations, running cars and industry than they did in 1990. About 1% more, according to the analysis by the Sustainability Council of New Zealand.
A new beginning in Copenhagen? Rudd's Copenhagen plan looks like a greenwashed version of the old Kyoto plan.