No Australian Carbon Policy, But At Least Scotty From Marketing Has An Advertising Campaign
A little over a month before the start of a major climate conference in Glasgow, the Morrison government is struggling to agree on emissions reduction targets, and a promised long-term strategy to cut climate pollution has still not materialised. But at least it has an advertising campaign. Earlier this month, the government released the “Australia’s Making Positive Energy” website and a blitz of ads across multiple platforms. It’s already on your telly.
The idea is that Australia has a “strong track record and future plans to reduce our emissions,” the emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, said. That strong track record may be news to some people. There’s also a catchphrase: “What we do today, will define our tomorrow.” Gas-fired recovery, anyone? The campaign makes a big central claim about Australia’s record on emissions and – as this column is the first of a weekly exercise in checking the facts on climate change – let’s have a look.
Australia, the campaign says, has cut emissions by 20% since 2005 – a figure Taylor used when releasing the latest quarterly emissions report at the end of last month. The government’s own data show the vast majority of the falls are in the land-use sector where the federal government doesn’t make policy. When state governments have tried to control land clearing, this hasn’t been done to tackle greenhouse gas emissions, but to slow down habitat loss and erosion.
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But thanks mostly to the expansion of the nation’s massive LNG industry, emissions in the second-largest sector of stationary energy are rising. Transport emissions are also going up. When Taylor announced the latest quarterly emissions report, he said if you excluded industries like LNG that are producing stuff for export then emissions had actually dropped by 38.3% since 2005. This is like saying “if we hadn’t generated all these emissions then our emissions would be lower.” It’s disingenuous but in ALL CAPS.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/30/scott-morrisons-marketing-suggests-australia-has-a-strong-track-record-on-emissions