The global community's ability to name fossil fuels as the cause of the climate emergency will be at the centre of debate at the Cop31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, where Australian climate change and energy minister Chris Bowen serves as president of negotiations.
Australian politics could have looked markedly different this week if the Albanese government had succeeded in its longstanding bid to host the major UN climate summit in Adelaide. Tens of thousands of people, including ministers and diplomats representing 200 countries, would have descended on the city to meet, lobby and negotiate over how to tackle the climate crisis, and wander the halls of a massive green trade fair that runs alongside the formal talks.
For two weeks, it would have been the biggest news story in the country. Instead, an estimated 100,000 people are flooding the streets of Antalya, a Turkish resort city on the Mediterranean, for the summit known as Cop31.
Australia's Climate Policies and Fossil Fuel Exports
Some senior members of the Albanese cabinet are not sorry they are so far away and lost enthusiasm for hosting the event before the final decision was made. Aside from Bowen, the government has shown a diminishing appetite to make the case that fighting global heating is a top priority.
It still has the policies it brought in after the 2022 election – to underwrite large-scale renewable energy, make electric vehicles more available and affordable, and put a limit on industrial pollution – and last year added a generous household battery subsidy scheme. But meeting its emissions reduction targets will require significantly more.
Meanwhile, the government continues to approve new coal and gas extraction, mostly for export. Since its election, 38 developments have been given the green light. Since 2005 – the year against which Australia measures its emissions reduction targets – annual domestic emissions are estimated to have fallen by 25%. But, according to analysis by Naru Research, emissions from burning Australian fossil fuels after they are exported overseas have roughly doubled. Australia is one of the world's top-three fossil fuel exporters.
The Challenge of Negotiating Consensus
Bowen is well regarded within the UN climate negotiations, winning praise for the role he has played in trying to advance the negotiations since 2022. He played a central role alongside Pacific leaders in the compromise deal in Dubai that led countries to agree that a transition away from fossil fuels was necessary.
The world has missed a key goal of the Paris agreement – aiming to keep global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels – and progress that has been achieved has been slow and partial. It took until Cop28 in 2023 for there to be a UN consensus agreement that the world needed to "transition away from fossil fuels".
But the agreement did help drive an increase in renewable energy investment by sending a signal to big money that this was where the world was heading. Projections of future temperature increase remain bad, but not quite as catastrophically bad as a decade ago.
Key Goals and the Road Ahead
There will be focus on a potential agreement that 35% of the world's energy should come from electricity by 2035. An analysis for the Australian government suggested reaching this target could lead to a significant reduction in fossil fuel use across industry, transport, heating and cooking, and spur investment in clean energy.
Other goals nominated by Bowen in an interview with the Guardian include mobilising climate finance for island states, including in the Pacific, that currently receive just 0.2% of what has been committed globally to help countries cope with the crisis despite being some of the nations most at risk. He also emphasised the need to limit "overshoot" – how much the world goes past 1.5C heating so that it has a chance to get back there by drawing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Whether the global community can bring itself to name fossil fuels as the problem will be at the centre of debate over the next fortnight. It may be that the best result possible in Antalya is just keeping the UN climate progress together until the US returns under a Democrat president and the world meets in a historic climate summit in China in two years.
