Thirty three years ago, on this day, October 11, 1990, the Federal Government of Australia, under Prime Minister Bob Hawke, made its first “commitment” to reduce emissions.
The Commonwealth Government followed the states and also adopted the Toronto Target of a 20 per cent reduction, a target that in retrospect appears hopelessly optimistic. (Scorcher, p. 47)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Second World Climate Conference was coming up. October 10th was the last cabinet meeting before Ros Kelly would be flying off to Geneva and she couldn’t go empty-handed. Meanwhile the environmental lobby wanted a strong target.
Previous Environment Minister Graham Richardson had tried to get the Toronto target agreed in May 1989, and had been shot down by Paul Keating.
What I think we can learn from this
Politicians like targets – it makes them feel and look responsible and responsive. As long as there are caveats and loopholes, they’re happy enough. Other people are willing to sign on with that, more or less. The target is usually so far in advance that the politician will have at least left public office or if it’s a 30 or 40 year in the future target then they’ll be dead and they don’t care. Legacy games, that’s what these are, that’s all they are. But the other effect of the existence of a target is it allows middle-class people to snooze rather than get up on their hind legs.
What happened next
Kelly went to the second World climate conference shortly after. The international negotiations began properly.
The Industry Commission also did a report about the economics of climate change this was one of the quid pro quo that Paul Keating, still at this stage Treasurer, had extracted for going along with the the Interim Planning Target Australia never took the steps it would have needed to meet the interim Planning Target and by 1995 it was a dead duck. As will our species be in another 20 or 30 years. You could almost say in fact that we are already functionally extinct. We just don’t know it yet but I digress…
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
References
Hudson, M. 2015 – https://theconversation.com/25-years-ago-the-australian-government-promised-deep-emissions-cuts-and-yet-here-we-still-are-46805