Scott Morrison is unlikely to win a last-minute speaking slot at a global leaders’ climate ambition summit as his government has failed to meet the demands set by the event organisers, a long-time advisor at international talks says.
As Guardian Australia revealed on Monday, the prime minister has not yet been confirmed to give a speech at the weekend summit, which is being hosted by Britain, France and the UN in a bid to boost climate commitments ahead of a major conference in Glasgow next year.
The co-hosts, which also include Chile and Italy, wrote to national leaders in October offering speaking slots to countries that promised deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, backed a long-term strategy to reach net-zero emissions, or offered new commitments on climate finance or adaptation.
Morrison first acknowledged the summit last week when he told parliament he would use it to “correct mistruths” about his government’s heavily criticised record on emissions reduction.
There has been speculation in some media outlets that Australia would speak at the summit and use the slot to confirm it now expected to meet its 2030 Paris agreement target through new emissions reductions, rather than relying on controversial carryover credits, a carbon accounting measure used under the expiring Kyoto protocol.
But Bill Hare, an adviser to developing countries at UN climate talks for decades and the chief executive of science and policy firm Climate Analytics, said the suggestion Australia may drop its carryover credit claim had not been interpreted as “an act of ambition”.
“My view at this point is they are not going to get invited,” he said. “The carryover credit issue has done a lot of damage. There’s general confusion about what the government is really doing and where it stands on climate change.”
Multiple sources familiar with the organisation of the summit said on Wednesday they had been told the hosts had written to the Australian government to say Morrison had not been offered a speaking slot, though none had seen the letter.
More than 70 countries have been told they will get a slot. Most will provide a recorded video message. Canada and New Zealand, which both have set net zero targets for 2050, are also believed to have missed out.
Nigel Topping, Britain’s “high-level climate action champion” for the Glasgow conference, last week said he did not know if Morrison had been confirmed to speak but would find it “very surprising” if he had been without making a net zero emissions pledge.
Hare said it was difficult for Australia to convince other countries it was serious about combating climate change when it had not set that target. It has been adopted by virtually all of Australia’s major trading partners, including China, Japan, South Korea, Britain and the European Union and several less affluent countries, including Argentina and Chile. They will be joined by the US when Joe Biden assumes the presidency in January.
Hare said the net zero target was just one of several issues preventing Australia from getting a speaking berth. He said countries were also aware that the Morrison government had said it would not increase its 2030 emissions target before the Glasgow summit when others were setting more exacting goals.
Britain has promised to cut emissions to 68% below 1990 levels by then, and the EU is meeting this week to decide on a potential 55% cut. By comparison, Australia’s 2030 target – a 26-28% cut below 2005 levels – is considered unambitious and well below what scientists have advised is necessary.
Hare said the Morrison government was also increasingly isolated within Australia in resisting greater climate ambition. All the states with the possible exception of Western Australia have set and are aiming to meet net zero goals for 2050. The target is also backed by major super funds, corporate players and the Business Council of Australia.
“But the government won’t do it,” Hare said. “There’s a measurable difference between what states are doing and what the federal government is prepared to do, and people are noticing that.”
Guardian Australia this week reported that the federal energy and emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, would meet with his NSW counterpart, Matt Kean, on Friday, after Morrison raised concerns with premier Gladys Berejiklian about her state’s recently legislated commitment to build 12 gigawatts of clean energy as part of a transition road map.
Some federal Coalition MPs have also continued to insist the government use carryover credits from the Kyoto period to meet Australia’s 2030 target rather than meeting the commitment through tangible emissions reduction.
Government officials have conceded Australia is the only country that has proposed to use the credits, which it claims to have earned by bettering the unambitious targets it set under the previous Kyoto protocol.
For example, Australia claimed carryover credits for beating a self-set target that allowed it to increase emissions by 8% between 1990 and 2012. The carryover credits plan was widely condemned by other countries at the last major climate summit in Madrid.
Morrison is expected to raise carryover credits in an address to a Pacific Islands Forum online event on Friday night, which is designed to link commitments made at a leaders’ meeting in August last year with the goals of the Glasgow summit. He recently telegraphed a potential shift on the issue in a speech to business leaders.
Fourteen Pacific leaders, including former presidents and prime ministers and church leaders, last week penned an open letter to Morrison urging him to commit to net-zero by 2050 and to abandon the credits plan.
Pacific leaders have also called for deeper cuts in the short term. The Climate Change Authority recommended six years ago that Australia should be reducing emissions by equivalent to between 45% and 65% below 2005 levels by 2030 to play its part under a meaningful global deal.
