Former Greens leader Bob Brown has quit his life membership of the Australian Conservation Foundation in protest after the environment group urged parliament to “strengthen and pass” a signature Albanese government climate policy.
Brown said he had returned his life membership – awarded in the 1980s for his leadership in the campaign to save Tasmania’s Franklin River – over ACF’s position on the safeguard mechanism, an industrial emissions policy that is the subject of negotiations between Labor and the Greens.
It came after the ACF chief executive, Kelly O’Shanassy, released a statement on Tuesday that said a new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed deeper and faster cuts in greenhouse gas emissions were needed.
O’Shanassy said the “clear and urgent message” to parliament was that it should “strengthen and pass the safeguard mechanism, then find a way to stop funding and approving new coal and gas projects in this term”. She called on the government to accept amendments to limit the use of carbon offsets and place stricter requirements on new coal and gas developments.
Brown said the ACF had undermined the Greens position by calling for what he described as “lowest common denominator legislation” to be passed while talks continued.
He said the group was engaged in deal-making when it should recognise its first job was to “fight hard for the environment”. That meant strongly backing the case by climate scientists and the UN secretary-general António Guterres and the Greens there could be no new fossil fuel developments if the world was to limit damage from climate change, he said.
Brown accused the ACF and the Climate Council, which has taken a similar position, of instead being part of a “Labor-backed lobby to have the Greens vilified for wanting more action against the climate crisis”, and said he did not want to be part of it.
“It is a watershed moment. That [safeguard] legislation is not good enough and the Greens are taking a position that has been validated by the IPCC,” he said.
“I would expect the environment movement to be full-on in opposing the fossil fuel and forestry dominance in this country. Instead we’ve got major groups saying ‘let’s make a deal’. C’mon, that’s not good enough.”
The safeguard mechanism was introduced by the Coalition in 2016. It was promised to put a limit on greenhouse gas emissions from about 200 major industrial facilities.
It applies to facilities that emit more than 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year. Each facility is set an emissions limit, known as a baseline.
The Coalition said companies that emitted above their baseline would have to buy carbon offsets or pay a penalty. In practice, facilities were allowed to change their baselines, few were penalised and industrial emissions continued to increase.
Labor plans to revamp the scheme.
It would set new baselines based on emissions intensity – how much a facility releases per unit of production. Baselines will be reduced by 4.9% a year.
Companies could choose whether to make onsite emissions cuts or buy Australian carbon credit units.
New polluting facilities, including gas and coalmines, could open and would be set baselines at “international best practice”.
Companies that emit less pollution than their baseline allows would be awarded a new type of “safeguard credit”. These within-scheme credits could be sold to other polluting facilities that emit more than their baseline and need offsets.
Labor wants the changes to start on 1 July 2023.
O’Shanassy said Brown was “a living legend of Australia’s environment movement” and ACF hoped he reconsidered his decision. She said the organisation had been clear there was “absolutely no place for new or extended coalmines”.
“The safeguard mechanism is a start, not an end, to climate policy in Australia,” she said.
O’Shanassy said ACF was running a court case trying to stop Woodside’s Scarborough gas project, which could result in more than 1.3bn tonnes of emissions globally. “We would welcome Bob back so we can work together to make this beautiful planet safer,” she said.
The government’s safeguard plan would require most of the country’s biggest 215 major polluting facilities to reduce their emissions intensity by 4.9% a year by making onsite cuts or buying controversial carbon offsets. The Greens offered to support the plan if the government stopped approving new coal and gas mines that could add billions of tonnes of Co2 to global emissions.
Labor has rejected this, saying it would breach an election commitment and that new developments would have emissions limits based on “international best practice”. The climate change minister, Chris Bowen, and the Greens leader, Adam Bandt, have been negotiating a potential compromise for weeks.
Brown said he did not want to offer Bandt advice on the talks.
Bandt said: “Bob Brown is a hero of mine who helped deliver world-leading climate legislation [in 2011] and I always listen very carefully to what he says.”
Speaking in parliament on Wednesday, Bowen said the legislation was necessary to start bringing industrial emissions down after years of failure, and the national 2030 target of a 43% cut in CO2 compared with 2005 levels would not be met without it.
Bowen said the IPCC report showed it was not too late to hold the world as close as possible to 1.5C, but that urgency was needed. He said the parliament had “an opportunity for the first time in a decade to put a measure in place to reduce emissions from our biggest emitters” by supporting the safeguard mechanism changes.
The government wants its legislation to clear the Senate by the end of next week.
