Nuclear won’t cut it: CCA says Australia must go all in on renewables to meet climate targets

Australia will not reach net zero emissions by 2050 under the federal Coalition’s nuclear power plan, according to a comprehensive new report that puts the shift to 100 per cent renewables at the centre of all plausible pathways to meet the global climate target.

In its inaugural Sector Pathways Review, published on Thursday, the Climate Change Authority charts a course for how Australia can decarbonise – either by 2050, in keeping with currents targets, or by 2040, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

The 2040 scenario has Australia meeting and beating its 2030 emissions target and reaching a reduction of 75 per cent on 2005 levels by 2035 – spurring hope this might be the number the Albanese government settles on when it finally delivers its promised interim target.

Under both scenarios, black and brown coal disappear entirely from the electricity mix by 2035, while total annual generation more than doubles its current levels, jumping from around 280 terawatt-hours in 2025 to 659TWh in 2050 on the 2°C pathway and to 767TWh on the 1.5°C pathway.

In both cases, by 2050 all of this new power comes from huge amounts of large-scale wind, solar, backed by storage. The 1.5°C pathway sees even fossil gas drop almost entirely out of the mix by 2040.

“Rapid decarbonisation and expansion of the electricity and energy sector is the key to meeting Australia’s economy-wide emissions reduction targets,” the report says.

“There is a clear and viable decarbonisation pathway for the sector that relies on known technologies to deliver very large emissions reductions and facilitate reductions in other sectors.”

Is policing in Australia corrupt and abusive? An eye-opening new book investigates

Review: When Cops are Criminals – edited by Veronica Gorrie (Scribe)

Edited by former Queensland police officer and Gunai/Kurnai woman Veronica Gorrie, the title of When Cops are Criminals may suggest a book covering high-profile, or unusual, officer-involved crimes. But this collection does not focus on the extraordinary.

As Gorrie explains, her reason for putting the book together was

to highlight the harmful behaviours committed by police every single day, and, more importantly, the impact this has on their victims.

Gorrie’s previous award-winning book, Black and Blue: a memoir of racism and resilience, was an account of her time as a police officer between 2001 and 2011. In this new edited collection, 12 authors – survivors, campaigners, practitioners, and academics – share their own stories (or those of others to which they are privy).

The predominant theme of When Cops are Criminals is that police and policing in Australia are systemically corrupt and abusive. Experiences of police misconduct and criminal behaviours – from racial profiling to sexual assault and family violence – are shown to be normalised, multi-jurisdictional, and persistent.

Each chapter addresses the enduring and systemic racism, homophobia, misogyny, institutionalised toxicity, and dysfunction that enable and excuse individual and collective abuses of policing power. The book also highlights the limitations of mechanisms designed to ensure effective police scrutiny and meaningful accountability.

The chapters largely focus on individual experiences, through deeply personal narratives and victim-survivor vignettes. These experiences are not situated within broader statistical analyses or tested empirical evidence, in terms of the number, type, or location of police involved in alleged abusive, corrupt, or criminal behaviours.

Nor, given the nature and purpose of the collection, are specific responses put forward by the various police forces or the bodies that oversee them.

However, a wealth of research confirms the enduring nature, across multiple police jurisdictions in Australia, of behaviour such as racial profiling, police perpetrated family violence, differential treatment of the LGBTQI+ community, discriminatory treatment of young people, and problematic handling of complaints. Victoria’s Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission (IBAC) has highlighted what it refers to as “cover up” behaviours that can mask police misconduct.

In her introduction, Gorrie notes:

Police are cruel towards many marginalised groups […] Police use excessive force […] Police are committing crimes, while off duty, against their partners, wives, family, and children [… and] Cops are known to prey on other cops.