Why PM got the Biden climate summit right

The politics of climate change are in rapid transition with President Joe Biden reasserting US global leadership and unveiling ambitious new targets that signal a contentious US stance — to encourage, shame and intimidate other national leaders into ambitious action.

There are three things you need to remember: emission reduction targets under the Paris Agreement are not legally binding, with the agreement having no compliance mechanism; Biden has made no pledge to a carbon price, which would seem necessary given his ambition; and approval by congress will be essen­tial for many of his commitments.

Beyond that, Biden’s policies are overwhelmingly about China. It is China, the biggest global emitter, that will decide whether Biden’s global strategy can work. And relations between the US and China are at their lowest ebb in many decades. How will this play out? Nobody knows. China is responsible for 29 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions compared with the US at 15 per cent and India at 7 per cent. Biden’s summit persuaded many industrialised democratic nations into roughly doubling their 2030 targets. But neither China nor India offered new targets, hardly a surprise.

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Chinese President Xi Jinping said his country would increase its emissions until they peaked before 2030 and achieved emissions neutrality before 2060. Xi was explicit in saying the “cornerstone of global climate governance” was the principle of “common but differentiated” obligations, which meant developed nations “need to increase climate ambition” while they must help developing nations in financing and technology and by refraining “from creating green trade barriers”.

This is a difficult global compact to hold together at a time of deepening US-China geo-strategic tension. The task facing China is immense. But it will not be seen to bow before Biden’s authority. While China has an ambitious agenda on renewables, coal provides 57 per cent of its energy consumption and analysis by Global Energy Monitor says China has 250 gigawatts of coal-fired power being built, more than America’s entire coal capacity.

This is the context for Xi’s remarks to the summit that China will limit the increase in coal over 2021-25 and reduce it over 2025-29. The truth is the entire global climate effort hinges on China and there is serious reason to believe China is playing a double game with the world.

Meanwhile, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi criticised the US in his speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, saying America “still interferes in China’s internal affairs including Taiwan, Xinjiang and Hong Kong-related matters” and made clear that China’s climate co-operation depended on US political behaviour.

That’s linkage. Neither Biden nor his climate envoy, John Kerry, can accept that. Surely they must say: no quid pro quo. But is anybody fool enough to think that China, given the strategic crisis, will not tie climate to geopolitics? It raises the question: how does China see climate change — as a problem to be solved or a lever to extract concessions from the US?

Given the huge stakes Biden and Kerry have set for themselves, who is to say they will not make concessions behind closed doors to seal US-China climate co-operation? That would raise complexity for Australia.

With his pledge to cut America’s emissions at 2030 by 50-52 per cent, roughly doubling the US effort, Biden has shifted the global focus from 2050 to 2030. While several dozen nations have officially communicated an intention to achieve net zero, very few have announced a plan to get there. Indeed, having a 2050 plan is not mandated under the flawed Paris Agreement

The 2050 story so far has been replete with gestures and little practical agenda. It is riddled with hypocrisy and hoax as documented by the UN. The 2020 UN Emissions Gap Report says there has been “limited progress” in G20 nations delivering formal submissions of “mid-century, long-term low emission development strategies” and refers to the “vast discrepancy” between the goals and the plans.

By bringing the focus down to 2030, Biden hopes to get the specifics on the table to ensure “all of us” act. But history suggests this won’t be easy and Biden’s own pledge is subject to US politics; witness the resistance to carbon pricing. Biden sensibly sells his program as “an opportunity to create millions of good-paying, middle-class, union jobs”. His hope is to fuse climate change action with rebuilding the middle class, an epic task.

The President got tangible results from his summit — Britain, the EU, Canada, Japan and South Korea offered more ambitious 2030 pledges. Perhaps China will offer more later this year.

The essential problem, however, remains as it always has — the gulf between electoral politics and emissions reduction imperatives. This is denied by Australia’s climate change progressives, who keep insisting the public will back far stronger action and who keep being proved wrong. They won’t change their mind. But managing the politics is a burden that Scott Morrison cannot avoid.

The Prime Minister is moving Australian policy step-by-step. He knows the global transition is under way, politically and financially. Australia has no option but to shift and this is a national interest, energy policy and foreign policy imperative. As a pragmatist, Morrison knows Australia must change its energy mix drastically in the next 30 years.

While there are tensions between the U.S. and China about trade and technology, climate change is an area where the pair could work together. WSJ’s Gerald F. Seib explains why it could also lead to competition for global leadership. Photo illustration: Ksenia Shaikhutdinova

The current language is net zero “preferably” by 2050. Morrison has already put coal on the backburner. His political task is to bring the centre-right of politics to the 2050 position, a transition inconceivable just a few years ago.

If this can be delivered it will transform the politics of climate and energy in this country. Part of the process is highlighting progress — Morrison said total emissions in Australia were 19 per cent lower last year than in 2005, a superior result to Canada, New Zealand, Germany, Japan and the US.

But Morrison knows the story of the 2019 election: Bill Shorten pledged a 45 per emission reduction by 2030 compared with the government’s 26-28 per cent target — and Shorten lost. People who argue Morrison should have offered the Biden summit a rough doubling of our 2030 ambition don’t pass the laugh test.

That would have been a blunder at every level — wrong forum, wrong timing, repeating the Shorten formula on the global stage while being lectured by a hypocritical China. The resistance from the conservative base is now weaker but this would have been a massive provocation.

Morrison needs to manage the domestic politics since this issue has destroyed four previous prime ministers. He will need to show his hand before the end-of-year Glasgow meeting. But there is one certainty: Morrison will be running at the next election on conservative, not progressive, values. If he tried the latter he would be doomed.

Editor-At-Large

Sydney

Paul Kelly is Editor-at-Large on The Australian. He was previously Editor-in-Chief of the paper and he writes on Australian politics, public policy and international affairs. Paul has covered Australian governm… Read more

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