Australia faces hard slog to meet climate target as Bowen says everyone must pull their weight

Australia’s new emissions reduction target is on the lower end of what serious climate watchers wanted, but it’s still going to be a hard slog to reach it.

Although the level was lower than environment groups wanted, it is ambitious on an international scale – especially considering Australia has spent a decade lagging at the bottom or hiding in the middle of the pack.

The alternative, doing nothing or little, is worse.

Chris Bowen made that clear on Monday when he kicked off the week of climate policy by releasing doomsday scenarios — sorry, risk assessment — of an Australia beset by heatwaves, floods, shrinking crops and uninsurable homes if nothing changed.

The minister also made it clear on Thursday that to halt this, everyone will have to pull their weight.

It’s hard to see, looking from here in 2025, how the scale of change required is achievable.

Rooftop solar uptake – already the best in the world – has to double. Rollout of large scale solar and windfarms needs to increase apace just as it’s increasingly met with community opposition.

Households need to dump their beloved gas cooktops, and buy electric cars.

New technologies will be required across industry, while the plan for the resources sector leans heavily on carbon capture and storage, which remains nascent despite years of research investment.

“Carbon removal” needs to double before 2050. The current technology available for this? Trees, lots of them.

It’s vital that new environmental approvals rules are got right and put in place fast, or little of this will be possible.

An even harder slog will be legislating the new target range.

Even if the Senate is simpler to deal with in its current iteration, the Greens and the Coalition moved as fast as instant gas hot water to announce their opposition to 62-70 per cent target.

Mr Bowen would rather focus on making the policy changes needed to reach it than waste time fighting for ultimately symbolic legislation.

Possibly the only people happy with the announcement were caucus, given it stuck to the expert advice, and business lobby groups who had feared something higher than 70 per cent.