Thread by @David_Ritter

Yesterday, UN chief @antonioguterres singled out Australia as a climate action ‘holdout’ in the wake of the #IPCCReport & its call to urgently speed up emissions cuts.
Why? World leaders are fed up with @ScottMorrisonMP's ruinous history of inaction & blocking progress:🧵#auspol

There is a long, dismal history of the Morrison ‘blocker’ government.
Basics first. The biggest cause of the climate crisis is the mining & burning of coal, oil & gas.
The govt has zero plans to actively phase out these polluting fossil fuels:
google.com/amp/s/theconve…

When exports & what is burned at home are combined, Australia is the world’s fifth-worst polluter. Morrison’s refusal to commit to phasing these out, in line with the IEA & IPCC calls means we are making an oversized contribution to climate change: theguardian.com/environment/20…

Instead of investing in renewables to reduce emissions, as recommended by the IPCC, the Morrison government continues to subsidise fossil fuels, to the tune of $11.6 billion last year (that’s $22k in taxpayer money per minute).
reneweconomy.com.au/perverse-austr…

The Morrison government’s pretend ‘plan’ to reduce emissions included no new policies, relies on currently non-existent and unproven ‘future technologies’ (aka hopes and prayers), and did not feature a tangible route to net zero:
theguardian.com/environment/20…

The ‘plan’ relies heavily on carbon capture and storage, an entirely unproven tech that the IPCC specifically called out in WG2 as maladaptive - a distraction from true emissions cuts:
smh.com.au/environment/cl…

The federal government has not only avoided taking meaningful climate action, but has also worked to actively block global progress time and again:
nytimes.com/2021/10/21/wor…

In December 2020, alongside Trump’s USA and Bolsonaro’s Brazil, Australia was named as one of the top three nations that most obstructed climate progress in the preceding five years by CAN International: climatenetwork.org/resource/2020-…

When the first of this trio of critical IPCC Report’s was released in August 2021, which called for greater action from leaders around the globe, Morrison responded with a lacklustre “yeah…. nah”: sbs.com.au/news/scott-mor…

Worth noting this was a step up from the next WG2 IPCC Report, released in February 2022, which the Morrison govt did not deign to formally respond to at all, despite its stark findings around climate impacts affecting Australians now and in the future:
reneweconomy.com.au/morrisons-deat…

Back to August 2021, when rather than responding, the Morrison team were busy concentrating diplomatic lobbying on cynical efforts to deny the science and block the listing of the Great Barrier Reef as World Heritage ‘in danger’: ​​ reuters.com/business/envir…

In September 2021, it was revealed the Morrison government has been pressuring the UK to drop commitments to the Paris climate goal from the UK-Aust trade deal. theguardian.com/australia-news…

Then in October 2021, the government was kept busy actively lobbying to undermine the findings for this WG3 report, trying to remove the need to phase out coal and deny Australia is a major producer:
unearthed.greenpeace.org/2021/10/21/lea…

Ahead of the critical COP26 climate conference in November 2021, Morrison was accused of blocking global progress at the G20 leaders summit, pushing back on phasing out fossil fuels:
reneweconomy.com.au/morrison-fumbl…

At COP26, things didn’t improve. The Morrison government teamed up with Saudi Arabia to attempt to water down the final conference outcomes - lobbying to remove references to phasing out coal and the 1.5C target:
smh.com.au/world/europe/a…

This embarrassingly regressive and recalcitrant approach to global climate progress has seen Australia identified as a complete laggard, landing us dead last among 170 nations on climate action.
washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/…

The irony is that Australia is uniquely placed to become a clean energy superpower - with the opportunity to grow a new green export mix worth $333 billion/annum. That’s 3 times the value of existing fossil fuel exports. bze.org.au/research_relea…

The IPCC scientists are crystal clear about one thing - the way to preserve our planet and human health to the best of our ability, at this point, is to markedly reduce emissions, as fast as we possibly can.

It’s time, @ScottMorrisonMP , to do your job. Put the lives and livelihoods of Australians, the future of our Pacific neighbours, our wildlife and ecosystems, and generations to come, ahead of the interests of the fossil fuel industry.
Act now to reduce emissions. #auspol