Last week was a big deal for anyone who cares about faltering efforts to live up to the Paris agreement and tackle the climate crisis. It’s possible that it will come to be seen as something of a landmark. The major step forward was not in Canberra, where an increasingly circular debate is playing out over Australia’s first piece of climate change legislation in more than a decade.
That’s not meant to dismiss the Albanese government’s climate change bill or the crossbench MPs working to strengthen it. The Australian legislation matters, primarily as a confidence boost for investors looking to get behind clean energy and other climate solutions. It sets minimum targets – a 43% cut by 2030 compared with 2005 and net zero by 2050 – and includes some useful transparency and accountability measures. But the reality is there is barely anything in it.
