Climate hearing heats up over ‘explosive’ target detail
Jacob Shteyman and Zac de Silva |
A heated dispute has broken out over Australia’s next key climate target after revelations the federal government might have been working on the figure for at least a year.
Treasury has been modelling the economic impacts of plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2035, which are widely expected to be unveiled this week.
The department has been working on the target since “early last year,” officials told a Senate inquiry on Tuesday, meaning work was under way well before the federal election in May.
Greens leader Larissa Waters said it was an “explosive revelation”.
The department’s admission made “a mockery of the process of actually looking at the climate science and determining the risks”, she told reporters in Canberra.
Treasury revealed it was asked to model a single figure for Australia’s climate target, not a range, as previously suspected.
“The modelling that we have done has a point estimate for 2035,” senior official Alex Heath told the hearing.
“That’s a function of the model that we have, and the difficulty of dealing with ranges.”
Dr Heath said she knew the figure the government had asked Treasury to model, but declined to share it, taking the question on notice.
It wasn’t immediately apparent when the department began modelling the exact 2035 target and officials also took further questions about the timing on notice, meaning they will respond in writing at a later date.
In March, AAP revealed Energy Minister Chris Bowen had received cabinet documents about what Australia’s climate target should be in February 2024.
A cabinet brief was created in April that year, and presentations for the senior ministry were formulated in December and January 2025.
Government officials also told the inquiry they hadn’t briefed the prime minister on the findings of the landmark National Climate Risk Assessment, a sobering report which warned of dramatic consequences if runaway global warming weren’t stopped quickly.
Anthony Albanese’s staff and broader department were briefed on the document.
The report, released on Monday, lays out how climate change will affect Australian communities, ecosystems and the economy under three different scenarios of warming.
A sharp increase in deaths because of heatwaves was among the most concerning findings of the risk assessment.
The cost of disaster recovery payments could also rise by $40 billion a year as climate hazards compound.
Broad-based ecosystem changes can be expected as well, with about half the native plant species found in any location anticipated to be different at 3C of warming.
In addition, as many as 1.5 million people could be impacted by coastal extremes, such as flooding and cyclones, by 2050.
AAP
