Australia: Parliament agrees to limit emissions from big polluters

Australia, one of the world’s largest per capita emitters of greenhouse gases, on Thursday passed climate laws targeting the biggest polluters, which will force mines, smelters and refineries to reduce their emissions by about 5% a year.

“This is the first time that greenhouse gas emissions reduction has been enshrined in Australian law,” Tommy Wiedmann, a sustainability expert at the University of New South Wales, told AFP. The laws apply to some 215 large industrial facilities – each producing more than 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases per year – and form the backbone of Australia’s commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

By requiring these units to reduce their emissions by 4.9% per year, the government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese believes it can prevent 200 million tons of carbon from being released into the atmosphere over the next decade. The facilities concerned, operated in particular by mining giants BHP and Rio Tinto, produce nearly 30% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Australian NGO Climate Council.

“What Parliament has done today is save our climate, save our economy and save our future,” said Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen in welcoming the passage of the legislation. The government saw the plan as ending a decade of political wrangling, which has repeatedly frustrated attempts to combat climate change. He reached an agreement on the safeguard mechanism after several weeks of difficult negotiations with the Green Party. They finally agreed to support the carbon plan after persuading the government to set a strict cap on emissions.

Natural disasters

The end of Australian climate inaction is “a step in the right direction” that “marginalizes the climate skeptics”, says Martin Brueckner, from Murdoch University in Perth. But this new legislation “will not be enough on its own,” Wiedmann warns, saying that “difficult decisions will have to be made in the next few years.

The Mining Industry Council, representing industrialists, warned of the risk of “deterioration of the national economy” and the loss of “tens of thousands of jobs”. Australia (26 million inhabitants) alone accounts for more than 1% of global emissions and ranks 14th among polluting countries, according to the Australian government agency for scientific research CSIRO. The mining sector accounts for 14.6% of its GDP, according to its central bank.

Elected last year, Mr. Albanese had promised to put an end to the fossil fuel policies that he said were implemented by the conservatives, who were in power for nine years. Long a laggard in the fight against greenhouse gas emissions, the country has moved on after a series of natural disasters blamed at least in part on climate change.

In the austral summer of 2019-20, Australia had seen giant bushfires devastate some eight million hectares of vegetation, killing more than 400 residents. The country also regularly experiences episodes of bleaching of its coral reef. Last year, about 20 people died in floods on the east coast.