The Prime Minister can’t help but mislead Australians on his lack of climate action.
This morning on the Today Show the Prime Minister repeated the false claim:
“For example, we will reduce our carbon emissions per capita by half between now and 2030,” and “Our per capita emissions will fall by half over the next 10 years.”
This is flat out wrong.
The Government’s latest emissions projections show emissions of 21 tonnes per person in 2019 and project it will decline to 17 tonnes per person in 2030.
That’s a decline of 19 per cent, not the 50 per cent he claimed.
This Government is obsessed with characterising emissions reduction as “per capita” – as if the effects of climate change will only be dependent upon our population size.
What the Government’s emissions data actually confirms is Australia will not meet our Kyoto commitment to cut emissions by 5 per cent next year.
In fact, our emissions reduction will amount to little more than a rounding error of 0.3 per cent, putting the lie to the Prime Minister’s claim that we are meeting and beating our international commitments.
The Government’s own data suggests our emissions will come down by only less than 5 per cent over the next 10 years. At that rate, it will take Australia 230 years to reach net zero emissions, rather than the 30 years scientists tell us is necessary.
The Prime Minister also repeated the false claim, “we are leading the world on renewable investments in technology and in energy in this country.”
This has been called out before, as Scott Morrison is cherry picking renewable energy investment per capita, among a select group of 30 countries, not the whole world.
In fact, as reported last week, renewable energy investment plummeted by 60 per cent in 2019 because of this Government’s refusal to come to the table with a national energy policy.
Instead of spending his time fudging the numbers the Prime Minister should show some leadership, control the civil war within the Coalition over climate action and put in place policy that will actually reduce Australia’s emissions.