Net zero by 2050: Climate action opponent Barnaby Joyce seals major deal
For the past decade he has been one of the most vocal opponents to action - but now Barnaby Joyce has sealed a deal to end the 'climate wars'. Under his leadership, the National Party has declared it will support a 2050 net zero carbon emissions target, a historic move that brings Australia into line with most of the developed world just a week before crunch climate talks in . After a week of internal meetings and debate, Mr Joyce revealed the junior Coalition party now backs the target and declared: 'I am 100 per cent on board with the goal of net zero by 2050.' The move harmonises Labor and Coalition climate change policy, ending a decade of the so-called 'climate wars' in politics. It also marks a major shift for the Deputy Prime Minister who has until now opposed climate change action by either questioning the existence of global warming or insisting that Australia can make no difference. As a Queensland senator in 2012, Mr Joyce called the issue 'an indulgent and irrelevant debate'. 'Even if climate change turns out to exist one day, we will have absolutely no impact on it whatsoever... we really should have bigger fish to fry than this one,' he said. A year earlier he had slammed climate scientists for trying to 'scare' western societies. 'I don't feel the world is coming to a catastrophic end. I just feel that this is just another one of those pitches,' he said in a 2GB radio interview. He said action was pointless, insisting 'there's definitely nothing you can do about it from Australia by yourself, except stuff up your economy'. A turning point for Mr Joyce may have occurred in 2016 when, during a bad drought, he visited his parents' property near Tamworth with a reporter from the Sydney Morning Herald. Staring at a creek that he used to play in as a child, he said: 'It's the driest I've ever seen it. When I look at this I start to wonder whether climate change might really be happening.' In recent years the New England MP has not questioned the existence of climate change but argued that it's occurring naturally. 'I believe this is one of the greatest policy phantoms, the misguided and quite ludicrous proposition that Australia can have any effect on the climate,' he wrote on Facebook in 2019. 'If we could, we should be the first to make it rain and, more importantly, stop the recurrence of an ice age anytime in the coming millennium.' He added: 'The very idea that we can stop climate change is barking mad. Climate change is inevitable, as geology has always shown.' Mr Joyce went on to claim that temperatures would 'drop 10 degrees' when another ice age hits in about a thousand years. 'One may suggest that warmer weather is the better problem of the two,' he said. This was despite the fact that 97 per cent of the world's climate scientists agree that humans are warming the globe with increasing greenhouse gas emissions. And on Christmas Eve 2019, Mr Joyce posted a selfie video of him feeding his cattle on his farm where he acknowledged climate change was real but railed against action such as Labor's carbon price. 'You don't have to convince me the climate's not changing. It is changing. My problem has always been whether you believe a new tax is going to change it back,' he said. Mr Joyce suggested only God could change the climate. 'And the other thing we've got to acknowledge is there's a higher authority that's beyond our comprehension - right up there in the sky - and unless we understand that it's got to be respected, then we're just fools, we're going to get nailed,' he said. When Mr Joyce overthrew Nationals leader Michael McCormack in June, analysts said a major reason for the coup was to stop the party agreeing to a net zero target amid fears that regional jobs would be destroyed. The new leader was adamant that his party would not support the target. 'The likelihood of Joyce getting endorsement from his party room to agree to net zero is zero. That's where the net zero lies,' he told the Weekend in July. But just three months later the Deputy Prime Minister has backed the target after his hand was forced by Scott Morrison whose decision to attend the Glasgow climate conference essentially confirmed he would adopt net zero with or without Nationals support. Mr Joyce said he had two choices: to either 'negotiate' a better deal for regional Australia or 'demonstrate' against the net zero target. 'The choice was quite obvious. It was to make sure we negotiate a better settlement and we did,' he said. Details of the net zero policy are yet to be announced, but the Nationals are believed to have secured safeguards - and lots of cash - for regional Australia which will be most affected by emissions reduction. On Sunday Mr Joyce said he expected there to be a 'firm commitment' to regional Australia in a submission which would go to cabinet this week, before Mr Morrison heads overseas on Thursday. 'The position regional people are in now is better than the terms and the process that was initially delivered to us,' he said after a partyroom meeting in Canberra which lasted just over two hours. 'We are in support of a process going forward that would go towards a 2050 emissions target. 'Obviously that depends upon what we see in the cabinet submission reflecting the conversations and agreements between myself and the prime minister.' Apart from a 'socio-economic safety valve' which would include regular reviews of the impacts of the emissions target on jobs and industries in rural and regional areas, a key factor in getting the Nationals over the line was the prospect of an election loss without a net zero target. 'Standing up for them (regional Australians) is making sure that you are in the (cabinet) room where the decisions are being made,' the deputy prime minister said. 'Heroics that have no outcome, heroics that leave nothing but a rhetorical flourish - but leave the person who is hurting in the same position as what they were - is not an outcome the Nationals party room supported.' He declined to say whether the prime minister had agreed during the negotiations to give the Nationals an extra cabinet position.