UK rallies Australia to up its net zero targets ahead of G7 summit
The UK is rallying Australia to up its emission reduction target for the 2030s, the British high commissioner has said today, suggesting 2050 will be too late.
Ahead of the UK hosted G7 meeting next week, British high commissioner Vicki Treadell said the UK was asking all attending nations to raise their interim net zero targets.
“We need to fight and build back better from Covid, and in that, our proposition is that you can create a greener, more prosperous future – that links back to our climate change priorities,” the top UK envoy told reporters in Australia’s capital, Canberra, today.
The high commissioner added that the UK had “made very clear that climate change is our number one foreign policy priority.”
Prime minister Boris Johnson reportedly made a point of Australia being more ambitious towards emission cuts in his last conversation with Australian leader Scott Morrison.
Climate change will likely appear as a key topic in the G7 summit – which will be followed by the UN’s flagship climate conference COP26 in Glasgow in November.
Australia has so far been somewhat rogue in comparison to other G7 states when applying emissions targets, with its prime minister Morrison pledging to outline the country’s path to net zero, but “we will not have it determined by others”.
Treadell suggested that the UK as an economic power could help rally Australia towards an ambitious climate plan.
“As the second-largest investor in Australia, British investment will be part of that solution,” she said.
Climate-conscious tariffs
Carbon border tariffs are set to be discussed, Treadell suggested, saying that countries that were gearing up their climate commitments did not want to be “importing carbon emissions” via supply chains.
The best way to carbon tariffs was “for all nations to have a high level of ambition, not just for net zero by 2050”, Treadell continued.
The climate-conscious tariffs, which have been explored by the UK, EU, the US and Japan, have garnered some opposition from Australian politicians.
However, they are “something that is being discussed”, the high commissioner said.
“But let’s be clear, for countries that are ambitious and set interim targets – 2030, 2035, 2040 – in order to have an assurance of achieving net zero by 2050, for all the hard work we do within our countries, what we don’t want to end up doing is importing carbon emissions through supply chains of what we buy in.
“So it is a tool, it is a policy option that people are looking at, but we will need agreement at an international level on that and how it might apply.”