The 56 countries that gathered at the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM) in Samoa, 49 of which have ocean borders, signed the first ever declaration to recognise maritime boundaries amid sea-level rises, protect at least 30% of oceans and restore at least 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030.
Samoan Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa said the Apia Commonwealth Ocean Declaration for One Resilient Common Future recognises that climate change is the “single greatest threat to the security and well-being of our people”.
Tuvaluan Prime Minister Feleti Teo also urged Australia, Canada and Britain to sign the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, saying that continuing to export fossil fuels and increase emission levels “is a death sentence for us”.
But when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was asked on October 25 why Australia is not doing enough to mitigate climate change, his excuse was that the challenge of climate change “doesn’t mean that you can just flick a switch and act immediately”.
For Albanese, the CHOGM meeting was a platform to announce that Australia is seeking “opportunities”, such as grants for green hydrogen innovation programs with Britain.
Albanese said that Pacific leaders understand that “we need to make sure that energy security is prioritised in order to make sure that we have that support going forward”.
He acknowledged that not all countries are equally affected. He said there is “an equity aspect to climate change because its impact is not even across the board”, and that Australia and those countries “responsible for the emissions” have a “greater responsibility to act”.
A well-researched new report by the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, Uncommon Wealth: Fossil Fuel Expansion in the Commonwealth, found that three wealthy countries — Britain, Australia and Canada (the “big 3”) — had major responsibility for the historical and “potential future development” of fossil fuels. They accounted for more than 60% of of Commonwealth countries’ emissions, while representing just 6% of their populations.
Uncommon Wealth also noted that the wealthiest Commonwealth countries are also the least dependent on income from extracting fossil fuels. Dividends from fossil fuel exploitation in Britain, Australia and Canada represents less than 2% of gross domestic product (GDP).
Meanwhile, for Malaysia it is 5%; for Nigeria and Papua New Guinea, 7%; and for Trinidad and Tobago, 11%. Commonwealth countries that have contributed far less to climate change as a result of fossil fuel extraction “face greater economic challenges due to their higher dependence on oil rents”.
The report noted that the countries largely responsible for the climate change problem, and which continue to benefit the most from fossil fuel expansion, can also most easily adapt to any reduction in fossil fuel production.
Therefore, the big 3 have much greater ability to “flick the switch” than small island states.
However, under Labor’s policies, cumulative fossil carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel exports are set to rise by 50% on current levels (30 billion tonnes, according to Climate Analytics) over the decade to 2035.
Albanese often says that Australia’s contribution to climate change is small and its actions relatively inconsequential, relative to other big countries.
But this quasi-denialist argument ignores the fact that Australia’s per capita emissions are among the highest in the world.
Uncommon Wealth revealed that Australia's fossil fuel exports are second only to Russia’s.
The fact that export emissions are not attributed to any country under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, masks the major role that Australia plays in deepening the climate emergency especially for its Pacific Island neighbours.
Uncommon Wealth noted that, collectively, Commonwealth countries have emitted nearly 170 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (out of a global total of just over 1 trillion tonnes) since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, where the climate crisis was first officially acknowledged.
Of that, countries with lower GDPs have been responsible for extracting under 30% (48 billion tonnes), while the “big 3” are responsible for emitting 91 billion tonnes — more than half the GHG emission total.
Three other countries — India, South Africa and Nigeria — with a total population of about 1.8 billion, 15 times more people than the big 3 combined, are responsible for extracting fossil fuels that emitted about 57 billion tonnes.
Uncommon Wealth warned that despite their “historic responsibility”, the big 3 countries “look set to dominate extraction and its emissions into the future”.
If they “recalibrated” their fossil fuel extraction and followed the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) call for no new fossil fuel projects, they could make a significant contribution to GHG abatement.
However, as of last year, Australia had 69 coal projects and 49 new oil and gas projects under consideration. Australia has 61% of the proposed coal export projects in the world.
“This ongoing expansion … underscores a reluctance to phase down coal at a pace required for the 1.5°C climate scenario,” the report said.
Gas projects expanded over the past two decades and are set to increase. This is despite studies confirming that methane emissions from gas and its processing can be up to 33% greater than those from coal, over a 20-year timeline.
Uncommon Wealth concluded that Australia, Canada and Britain are “on course to create emissions through fossil fuel extraction that exceed even those suggested by the IEA’s Business As Usual scenario”.
Meanwhile, even former defence leaders argue that Australia’s climate targets are too weak, demanding that coal and gas be kept in the ground.
Their open letter to Australia’s political leaders calls them out. “Predatory delay by political parties captured by the fossil fuel industry and other vested interests will result in millions of deaths around the world and unlivable extremes for more and more Australians.”
Climate scientists agree that the 2015 Paris Accord target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels means 100% clean energy and zero carbon emissions — not “net zero” — by 2030.
For Australia, this requires we flick the switch and leave coal and gas in the ground.
Australia wants to co-host COP31 with Pacific Island nations in 2026. But, without doing anything to curb fossil fuel emissions, how can it be taken seriously?