Government spin won't stop dangerous climate change

Listening to Australian Environment Minister Greg Hunt, you could be excused for thinking that Australia was somehow leading the world on climate action.

That's the spin of the past 24 hours following the news that the government will pay $660 million of taxpayers' money under its 'Direct Action' Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) to buy about 47 million tonnes of carbon pollution abatement over the next decade.

He also claimed: 'The critics have been hit out of the park.'

Really, Minister? Sounds more like a political stunt than a stunning result to me. A stunt timed to confuse Australians and other nations as Australia comes under growing pressure to set a meaningful carbon reduction target for the post-2020 era.

The world goes to Paris in December this year for the most important UN climate treaty negotiations of the decade, and Australia already is dragging the chain on saying what target it will bring to the deal-making table.

This week's announcement of the results of the ERF's first 'auction' for pollution-cutting projects won't do much to reassure the world that Australia can be trusted to meet its international responsibilities. The outcome means that the government already has committed 25 percent of the $2.55 billion allocated to its ERF to purchase about 15 percent of the abatement its needs to meet its very weak target of a 5 percent reduction on Australia's 2000 baseline by 2020.

The government is adamant that there is no more money available, so at that rate it will take 100 percent of the ERF funds pool to buy 60 percent of the already pathetic 5 percent target.Yet the Climate Change Authority says the 5 percent by 2020 should be raised to 19 percent immediately if Australia is to keep pace with the genuine leadership nations and to meet our responsibility to share the burden of keeping global warming under 2 degrees C.

According to 1 Million Women's friends at the Climate Institute, if the 2020 target rose to 19 percent - which should be the absolute minimum - then the first quarter of the ERF funds would only be covering 7 percent of the target.

And the Climate Council is pointing out that Australian reliance on dirty coal-fired electricity has actually increased since the government killed off the carbon-pricing scheme last year.

The ERF is funding projects like generating electricity from piggery manure, planting trees, managing savannah grasslands and capturing methane gas from landfills. These are good things in their own right, but we'll never achieve the pollution cuts we need unless we go straight to the big polluters and make them shut down. At the same time we need to be increasing the Renewable Energy Target, not slashing it as this government plans, so that clean energy from wind and solar will replace fossil fuels.

You can see the problem with the ERF. This Australian Government is doing too little too slowly without real commitment, and then talking it up as though they are world-beaters. Remember, we'll have to wait 10 years even to find out if the emission reductions the ERF is buying actually happen, but Minister Hunt is talking as though it's already emission accomplished.

I happen to think that previous governments weren't doing enough either given the huge threat that climate change poses to us and future generations. But at least the carbon-pricing scheme put the pressure on big polluters to pay rather than we taxpayers.