The Australian government is presently negotiating with the Liberal Party amendments to its proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. The Age is reporting that one of the proposed amendments is to extend the period of specific caps on emissions from 5 years to 10 years, followed by a further 10 years of upper and lower bounds for Australia’s target (gateways). At present the governments policy is for 5 years of caps, followed by 5 years of gateways, but the legislation allows the government to set the gateways for as long as they want.
At present, for political reasons most countries are proposing emission reduction targets for the next ten years that are significantly weaker that what the science is suggesting. This will result in countries having to make very steep emission reductions after 2020, or the more likely outcome of dangerous greenhouse gas concentrations. For this reason the next round of commitments for industrialised countries should be for the 5 year period 2013-2017 rather than the 8 year period 2013-2020. There should also be a mechanism where countries can increase the ambition of their targets without having to renegotiate and re-ratify an international agreement.
It is Climate Dilemma‘s understanding that Australia would prefer a shorter commitment period for industrialised countries after 2012. Australia is also proposing a mechanism for increasing emission reduction commitments as part of its “schedules” approach to the legal architecture for a post-2012 agreement. The coalition’s proposal to lock in targets for 10-20 years would not be compatible with a shorter commitment period. It would be a serious barrier to Australia increasing its own mitigation ambition. This proposal will undermine Australia’s international negotiating position.
Update: Peter Wood has an opinion piece on this in The Canberra Times, October 28, 2009, Page 11.
