Articles by Jeremy Moss, UNSW
The Paris Agreement 5 years on: big coal exporters like Australia face a reckoning
On Saturday, more than 70 global leaders came together at the UN’s Climate Ambition Summit, marking the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement. Prime Minister Scott Morrison was denied a speaking slot, in recognition of Australia’s failure to set meaningful climate commitments. Meanwhile, t...
New report: ‘Australia: an emissions super-power’
Download the full report here Newly released data from the Office of the Chief Economist shows Australia is increasing it’s contribution to global climate change. New government figures show that the GHG emissions from Australia’s exported fossil fuels have increased 4.4% between 2018 to 2019 ...
Matt Canavan says Australia doesn’t subsidise the fossil fuel industry, an expert says it does
Queensland Nationals Senator Matt Canavan on Monday night denied suggestions the government subsidises Australia’s fossil fuel industry. The comments prompted a swift response from some social media users, who cited evidence to the contrary. Canavan was responding to a viewer question on ABC’...
Social Justice and the Future of Fire Insurance in Australia
The Royal Commission into Natural Disaster Arrangements (Bushfire Royal Commission) opens its hearings next week. One of the issues that it will need to consider is whether the Australian system of home insurance is still fit for purpose in the face of increased climate-induced bushfire risk. ...
Morrison’s other stimulus
The debt incurred by the Government’s coronavirus stimulus packages will force a rethink of many of its current spending commitments. But what is also crucial is that money not be wasted trying to save the unsavable. Yet, this is exactly what the government is doing via its continuing...
Unions and a Just Transition
Ensuring that a climate transition is successful must involve the most efficient mitigation methods implemented as soon as possible. But as well as making deep cuts to our emissions, a transition also has to ensure that whatever policies are adopted achieve a just outcome, especially for t...
A message to the Climate Change Conference: cutting emissions is not enough
The latest round of UN climate negotiations - COP 25 - will begin in Madrid this week. The Conference will attempt to make progress on ramping measures to meet domestic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. But one thing that COP 25 is unlikely to make progress on is the constraint on the supply o...
Carbon majors
The emissions produced from the fossil fuels extracted by Australia’s major gas, coal and oil producing companies – “carbon majors” – such as BHP, Glencore and Yancoal, are now larger than all Australia’s domestic emissions. While these companies, and Australia itself, have no legal r...
The Morality of Exports
With the exception of air and sea travel, most GHG emissions are produced by people within the territories of states, so when it comes to assigning responsibility for the climate harms to which emissions contribute, the task ought to be fairly simple: states should take responsibility for emissions ...
Historical Emissions
The world is running out of time to reduce its levels of GHG emissions. Each year the world emits around 35 Gt of CO2. Avoiding the worst effects of climate change and keeping temperature rises to 2C means we are unable to continue emitting at such a rate; we have a limited time before exhausting...
