While Minister Bowen has said today that a target over 70 percent carries 'unacceptable environmental, social and economic costs for our country', the very modelling he is relying on to inform his targets does not factor in the costs of climate impacts from the Government's own National Climate Risk Assessment.
That Risk Assessment found the following was likely at just 2C of warming:
- 1.5 million Australians at risk of sea level rise making their homes and communities unliveable¹
- Rolling disastrous weather events
- Heat deaths surging by over 200% in cities like Sydney and Darwin²
- Hospitals pushed to the brink
- Hundreds of billions wiped from the property market over the next 25 years³
- Higher insurance bills, failing crops and higher grocery prices
- Mass extinction
¹Climate Risk Assessment Overview page 22
²Climate Risk Assessment Overview page 35 - figure 4
³Climate Risk Assessment Overview page 31
On pg. 14 of the CSIRO modelling, commissioned by the CCA, that the Government is relying on to dismiss further ambition lies a critical caveat:
"However, it should be noted that this analysis does not account for the benefits of avoided climate change impacts in either scenario."
It is unclear how the Government can stand by this modelling which fails to include the costs of 1.5, 2 or even more degrees of warming.
The modelling can be found online here:
As put by Greens Leader Senator Larissa Waters:
"The more we look at the modelling behind this utter failure of a climate target, the more it shows it was crafted to appease the coal and gas industry.
"The government's modelling fails to ask the question: what will be the cost of 1.5 million people losing their homes to sea level rises? What will be the cost of hospitals unable to see patients due to cascading catastrophic weather events? What will be the cost of crop failures on the price and availability of food?
"How can the government wave around modelling that doesn't address the cost of climate breakdown, when their own advice says this is what's coming?
"The climate target is an utter failure which doesn't account for the cost of climate change because it was written to appease the coal and gas industry.
"What a farce - the minister's laughable claim this morning that a target over 70% would carry 'unacceptable environmental, social and economic costs' is because his model deliberately ignored the cost of climate damage.
"Labor is using selective modelling to justify their pre-determined low climate target all because they want to keep their coal and gas donors happy.
"Labor's cynical attempt to mislead the public on the ambition of their climate targets takes the public for fools.
"Low ambition to appease the coal and gas corporations means ignoring the costs of more fires, more floods, more heatwaves and more extinctions.
"A truly ambitious target would be based on science and based on the avoided cost of disasters - and would entail ending coal and gas exports that are putting us all at risk.
"Labor are too captured by the political donations from coal and gas corporations that they have prioritised polluters' profits ahead of a safe climate future for everyday Australians and nature."
"We have existing, affordable technologies that ClimateWorks says could deliver over 85% emissions reduction and, with the Greens, Labor has the numbers in parliament to be truly ambitious on climate."
