Submission: Targets, Pathways and Progress
Submission to: 2024 Issues paper - Targets, Pathways and Progress
Climate Integrity welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Climate Change Authority 2024 Issues paper: Targets, Pathways and Progress.
Submission Summary
For Australia to meaningfully contribute to science-aligned climate action, then all regulatory changes, reforms, policies and business guidance must be raising the bar on what business is required to do to ensure real progress towards global 2035 emission reduction goals.
As an independent statutory body established to provide expert advice to the Australian Government on climate change policy, Climate Integrity believes the authority should be pursuing an overarching objective to increase ambition and improve the credibility of Australia’s transition.
Successive Federal Governments have allowed large corporations, mining giants and major emitters to control the agenda on climate-related policies and regulations, which has resulted in more financial support being directed to fossil fuel projects than climate action. Right now, less than 50% of Australians believe that the government is taking enough action to mitigate against the climate crisis and 1 in 2 Australians trust in the government to lead the renewable energy transition.
The authority should be creating a leadership platform to push the current government to accelerate climate action beyond a mandatory baseline, and over and above Australia’s current NDC commitments, whilst it remains unaligned to a 1.5 degree pathway.
As a priority, the Australian Government must implement mandatory transition planning to ensure businesses are taking the actions required to transition to net zero and meet our global decarbonisation goals.
The authority should be using its unique advisory opportunity to increase Australia’s whole-of-economy ambition beyond our current targets and strive for leadership towards 1.5 by modeling targets, sector pathways and advice in line with the latest science that ensures Australia is contributing fairly to global emissions reduction obligations.
