Climate targets are only as good as the action behind them. We need to aim higher
Right now, farmers in South Australia and Victoria are battling drought, while Queensland farmers pick up the pieces after heart-breaking floods. Globally, 2024 was the hottest year on record and the first time average temperatures surged 1.5C above preindustrial levels. We are living through longer, deadlier heatwaves, devastating bushfires, more frequent and intense floods, and rising sea levels that threaten coastal communities.
This year, the economic impacts of the climate crisis have been severe as well, with Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred adding a $1.2bn cost to the federal budget.
Scientists have warned us for decades that slashing climate pollution is critical to protecting Australians. The last federal parliament started to turn around Australia's highly polluting economy. We now have about 40% of the electricity in our main grid coming from renewables backed by storage, a vehicle efficiency scheme to cut transport pollution, and we have begun regulating big polluters.
Despite the fossil fuel lobby bankrolling third party groups to run campaigns against climate solutions, Australians have resoundingly endorsed Labor's energy and climate policies and given them a historic mandate to go further.
One of the first tests for the new government will be setting a 2035 emissions reduction target, a line in the sand that will guide Australia's climate action for the next decade. The government has tasked the Climate Change Authority (CCA), headed up by former NSW Treasurer Matt Kean, to come up with a number that reflects both what is necessary and what is possible.
The world's best scientists have told us that to protect Australians we must drive down climate pollution by at least 75% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2035.
Most Australian state and territory governments have set commitments to cut climate pollution. ClimateWorks has found that together these targets would slash Australia's pollution by an estimated 66 to 71%. While it is well below what is necessary, the federal government can build on this sub-national action to drive pollution down further and faster. A 71% target should be considered a floor upon which a larger federal target should be built.
Climate science can also show us the real world implications of doing too little. Our analysis shows that a 2035 target of 70% (essentially the current commitments of Australia's states and territory governments) would align with global warming of well over 2C this century, if other countries made similar commitments. This would be catastrophic: communities exposed to flood and fire risk will certainly be forced to move, our coral reefs will be all but destroyed, and the costs to our economy and way of life would be severe.
In response to Donald Trump's shrill call to 'drill, baby drill', the rest of the world has an opportunity to step into the vacuum created by the absence of American leadership. Australia is the world's 14th largest polluter and one of the biggest fossil fuel exporters. If we set a strong 2035 target alongside other climate leaders, we will bring others with us to keep driving the clean energy revolution, and strengthen our case as a host of the 2026 Conference of Parties.
But, if significant countries like Australia step backwards it is highly likely that we will leave the climate challenge far too late. We resign ourselves to catastrophic levels of global heating.
Understanding what is possible is a tricky process of balancing assumptions about the future. In doing so, what is possible tends to be underestimated. When I started working on climate change in 2006 there were a few thousand homes in Australia with solar panels. Today there are over 4m. No one expected it to happen so fast. The cost of solar, wind and batteries have fallen more quickly than expected, with our communities and business leaders embracing the change.
Of course, targets are only as good as the action behind them and we need to go faster in all areas.
Australia's 2035 emissions reduction target must be a line of defence against the escalating dangers of climate change. The Australian people are expecting meaningful action on climate change, having just given a massive majority to a Labor government that promised to take the crisis seriously.
The choices around how fast we cut climate pollution will define how safe or scary the world becomes as our children grow up. Doing what is necessary is hard, but failing now could very likely undermine other work of this government on setting out its legacy – and will make life extremely difficult for everyone that comes after us.
Amanda McKenzie is the CEO of the Climate Council
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