Adelaide, is bidding to be host of the 2026 episode of the interminable climate soap opera known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change .(UNFCCC. At stake an alleged $100-200m boost to the host city’s economy..
In what follows, I explain what’s a COP – hopefully telling you some things you don’t already know, offer a history of South Australian awareness of climate change, and then make some brief idle speculations on how Adelaide’s bid might fair – could it do a Bradbury?
Oh no, it’s the COPs!
COPs are the “Conferences of the Parties.” While there are plenty of parties at COPs, in this case the “parties” refers to the countries (almost the whole world) which have signed up to the UNFCCC;, which was one of the international treaties signed at the pivotal “Earth Summit” in 1992, held in Rio de Janeiro.
The first COP was in Berlin in March-April 1995 (a young Angela Merkel was a key player). There have been 28 since, and COP29 is starting today, in Azerbaijan
The basic problem is that the original treaty never specified targets and timetables for emissions reductions by rich countries. The French and most European countries were keen, but Uncle Sam said “nope. Do that and we won’t come.”. That has meant a series of efforts to get emissions cuts agreed – Kyoto 1997 (agreed, but USA and Australia pulled out), Copenhagen 2009 (ended in tears and little else) and Paris in 2015 (warm words, no teeth). In the meantime, the burning of oil, coal and gas has soared. This means that the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has gone way up (and is increasing faster and faster, as the things that take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere give up the ghost – or as the scientists call it – ‘sink failure’).
Of course, by the time Adelaide finds out if its bid is successful, the whole COP circus might be grinding to a halt, if Donald Trump repeats what he did last time round, and withdraws from negotiations.
Why Adelaide?
Anthony Albanese announced that Australia would bid to co-host COP31 with South Pacific Island nations in November 2022 (giving up on the idea of hosting it in 2024)]. It isn’t automatically capital cities that host the COP. For example when the UK hosted in 2021 Glasgow got the gig in any case. Let’s start with the obvious reason why Adelaide might not succeed; it’s not on the Pacific Coast. However, unlike Sydney and Brisbane which are, Adelaide is not the capital of a state with an enormous coal export industry that has enraged the South Pacific Island states – “awks” as the kids used to say.
A history lesson
South Australians have always known that the weather matters, and is unpredictable. Go north of the Goyder line and you’ll see the abandoned buildings of those who thought they could buck the system. Over the last 55 years though, awareness has grown of man-made problems.
In March 1970 a newly-elected Labor politician, Richard Gun, referred to carbon dioxide build up in his maiden speech (see this article on the Guardian website by Royce Kurmelovs).
In July 1970 as alarm at “ecology” (as it was then called) reached an early peak, a group of business leaders at an Adelaide luncheon were told the following
“And so the sprawling city, the maimed country, and even the air we breathe and the sea that gives us life, combine into what can only be described as a coming nightmare unless we as a people are prepared to become violently Australia-conscious and to replan, decentralise, preserve, prohibit and police. We won’t correct the situation unless first as individuals and secondly as a nation we are prepared to think, to take care and to spend money.”
But this was not a protestor who’d stormed the stage. It was in fact Bede Callaghan, managing director of the Commonwealth Banking Corporation
Already in February of that year the Liberal government of Steele Hall created a committee (of course!) on the environment. It held hearings and in May 1972 produced the “Jordan report,” which included a mention of C02, though largely a dismissive one.
And yes, it included a section – albeit understandably equivocal – on carbon dioxide.
As with other states and countries, a Department of the Environment was created. But carbon dioxide was a distant and contested problem back then. It pops up in some places, such as a September 1972 Friends of the Earth seminar “Is technology a blueprint for destruction” at Adelaide University. and in the work of hydrogen-advocating Professor John Bockris at Flinders University in 1973.
A South Australian senator, Don Jessop mentions it in Federal parliament, in November 1973
“It is quite apparent to world scientists that the silent pollutant, carbon dioxide, is increasing in the atmosphere and will cause us great concern in the future.
And while the warnings and alarms continued through the 1970s and 1980s, with visiting professors (including pro-nuclear ones), ABC documentaries, CSIRO documentaries, and mentions of the problem by groups such as Environmentalists for Full Employment.
It is fair to say that policymaker awareness only took off in the second half of the 1980s.
In 1985 atmospheric scientists met in Villach, a city in Austria. They realised they had underestimated the impact of gases other than carbon dioxide, and that the heating they had expected to arrive in several decades was likely to come much faster. They left Villach determined to warn policymakers. The Australian result of this was that CSIRO started briefing politicians, including the Australian Environment Council. After its June 1986 meeting, South Australia’s environment minister, Don Hopgood, went public with a stark warning about sea-level rise,
The following years saw a flurry of scientific and public/political conferences, promises, exhortations and committees, all about “the Greenhouse Effect.” Internationally this culminated with the climate treaty in Rio in June 1992. South Australia had set up committees and programmes, but all this was basically swept away with the disaster of the failure of the State Bank of South Australia, Premier John Bannon’s resignation and the enormous defeat Labor experienced. The incoming Liberals paid lipservice at most, finding it easier not to kill anything off officially but let it instead die by neglect.
Climate change played little part in the debates over electricity generation that took up the second half of the 1990s. However, a determined group of policy wonks were beavering away, keen to promote renewables and action on climate. The return of Labor in 2002 was a turning point. The first (tiny by today’s standards) wind farm went live the following year. Over the years, Premier Mike Rann skilfully found wiggle-room as the Federal government was forced to continue to offer policy support. As Tristan Edis put it in a 2014 article
“The way it works is SA public servants assess the likely amount of renewable energy that will be installed in the state within the next few years as a result of the federal government’s Renewable Energy Target. Then, the South Australian government take this projection of what will be achieved under business as usual a few years from now, and duly claim it as an ambitious target that they are setting for themselves, but push out the year a bit so they claim they’ve reached it ahead of schedule.”
But Rann had been attending to the broader cultural issues as well. He invited US climate scientist Stephen Schneider to be South Australia thinker in residence in 2006. Schneider’s message – that the Millennium Drought was a harbinger of problems to come and we’d better get preparing now, resonated.
The next Labor Premier, Jay Weatherill, accelerated Rann’s trajectory. The 2016 blackout was perhaps pivotal. Two events stand out – First, Weatherill dishing it out to Federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg and the latter just having to take it.
Second- the big battery of Elon Musk, back when progressives could look past some of his, shall we say, foibles.
By the time Labor lost power, the energy transition had such momentum – and powerful people making money from it and popular support, that the state Liberals basically ignored their Federal counterparts.
Labor has returned to power, with even bolder targets. It seems now somewhat starry-eyed about hydrogen, and alarmingly willing to do whatever Santos wants, before being asked.
What will happen?
Who knows? I’ve learned not to make confident predictions about anything other than “higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere next year.”
We will all find out in a couple of weeks. Will Edis v2.0 work? It already has in once sense: Win or lose, Adelaide raises its profile and plays the ‘inward green investment’ vibes game. It’s a smart move from a political party that has shown alertness to the opportunities national and international policy games present niche actors.