We fact checked Scott Morrison's speech to the United Nations. Here's what we found
RMIT ABC Fact Check
Posted 9 minutes ago
PHOTO: Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison addresses the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York City, New York, U.S., September 25, 2019. (Reuters: Lucas Jackson)
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has taken to the international stage to hammer the message that Australia is "taking real action on climate change and we are getting results".
In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Mr Morrison accused domestic and global critics of ignoring Australia's achievements in tackling climate change, complaining that "the facts simply don't fit the narrative they wish to project about our contribution".
RMIT ABC Fact Check has previously analysed Australia's record when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Here is our take on some of the key claims made by Mr Morrison in his speech.
Climate change action
"Australia is taking real action on climate change and we are getting results."
Scott Morrison
As Fact Check
noted in April, emissions under the Coalition have risen for four of the past five years, and are higher today than they were in 2013.
Fact check: Emissions 'deficit'
Energy Minister Angus Taylor says the Coalition inherited a 755 million tonne emissions "deficit" when it came to office, and that it had since been turned around by 1.1 billion tonnes. Fact Check finds that to be misleading.
Between 2008 and 2013 emissions trended down. But from 2014, following the repeal of Labor's carbon tax, emissions have generally risen.
In 2018, Australia produced 534 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, up 4.3 per cent from 512 million tonnes produced in 2013.
According to the most recent official forecasts, annual emissions will reach 540 million tonnes in 2020.
As Fact Check has previously noted, the Coalition's "Direct Action" emissions reduction fund has played a positive, albeit modest, part in keeping a lid on emissions.
Kyoto commitments
"By 2020, Australia will have overachieved on our Kyoto commitments, reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 367 million tonnes more than required to meet our 2020 Kyoto target."
Scott Morrison
The
second Kyoto target, negotiated in Doha, Qatar in 2012, requires Australia to cut emissions to 5 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020.
A simple calculation, then, would suggest emissions would need to be no more than 524 million tonnes in 2020 to reach this target.
However, the Department of the Environment and Energy has taken a more complicated approach, creating an "emissions budget" for the period 2013 to 2020.
The cumulative effect of this emissions budget is that Australia is limited to emitting almost 4.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in total over the eight years up to and including 2020.
In terms of achieving the 2020 target, what matters — as the department sees it — is whether cumulative actual emissions between 2013 and 2020 turn out to be 4.5 billion tonnes or lower.
As previously noted, in recent years emissions have been trending up under the Coalition's watch. However, Australia is still likely to beat the cumulative emissions target for two main reasons.
First, emissions in the early years of the second Kyoto period turned out to be lower than expected, particularly following the introduction of Labor's carbon tax, which came into effect in July 2012, and was repealed in July 2014.
Hover and slide
currently at the lowest levels since 1990.
Likewise, the "emissions intensity" of the economy — measured by calculating emissions per dollar of real GDP.
However, these two measures are not particularly meaningful.
As experts have previously told Fact Check, what counts as far as the Earth's atmosphere — and international agreements — are concerned is the total level of emissions.
As Dr Hugh Saddler, an honorary associate professor at ANU's Crawford School of Public Policy put it:
"The atmosphere doesn't care how many people are contributing to emissions; it's the total quantity of emissions that matters."
Moreover, while Australia's emissions per capita have fallen, they remain among the highest in the world.
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PHOTO: Hazelwood power station in the La Trobe Valley in Victoria's south-east. (AAP: Greenpeace)
