A pledge to power 35 per cent of the world with electricity by 2035 is the central aim of United Nations climate talks in Türkiye this week, as the international summit concedes for the first time that global temperatures will rise more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Source: ABC News.
Australia and Türkiye are joint presidents of this year’s UN meeting on climate change.
Climate change minister Chris Bowen told the opening session of the conference that it was meeting “at a moment of consequence, whether it be glacial collapse in Nepal, heat deaths in Europe, or an intensifying El Niño” .
“Climate change is here. It is not a forecast. It is not a prediction. It is the lived reality for billions of people.”
But discussion of what to do to reduce the burning of fossil fuels that has fuelled so much of that change is the elephant in the room at this year’s meeting – not formally on the agenda, despite UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell telling the conference that “this year’s fossil fuel cost chaos has delivered a global shock-wave, hitting households hard and spreading inflation like a cancer”.
As United Nations climate talks commence in Türkiye, Australia’s position as a climate leader will be tested.
As a major fossil fuel exporter, Australia has already come under intense criticism – particularly from Pacific nations – because it has allowed coal mining to expand and the North West Shelf gas project to be extended.
According to the International Energy Agency, electricity-generated power accounts for a 23 per cent share, and is forecast to rise to 30 per cent by 2035 as a result of existing policies already on track.
The international pledge at the climate talks held in Paris in 2015 was to limit the long term rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees per cent above pre-industrial levels.
Just 11 years later, the meeting in the resort city of Antalya will be the first to concede that won’t happen.
Mr Bowen struck an optimistic note, saying that before Paris “the world was heading for warming approaching 4 degrees”.
“Today, projections are closer to 2.6 degrees”.
Türkiye and Australia say the Antalya meeting will focus mostly on trying to implement measures already agreed to, rather than set ambitious new targets.
FULL STORY
COP31 summit targets major electrification push as 1.5C goal slips away (By Laura Tingle, ABC News)
