After months of threatening, the junior Coalition partner has finally withdrawn its support for the national target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

“We are pegging ourselves to what the rest of the world does,” the Nationals leader, David Littleproud, claimed on Monday.

The Nationals argue Australians are already feeling worsening financial pain from “net zero” and the government is imposing this on the country as the rest of the world is walking away from the commitment.

Neither of these things is true.

There is also a rising chorus of Liberal MPs who would like to see their party follow the Nationals and abandon the net zero target.

If adopted as Coalition policy, it means Australia’s alternative government would go to the next election with positions that would put Australia in breach of the commitments it made when it signed up to the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

What is it exactly that the Nationals have dropped?

Until the weekend, the Nationals had backed the Coalition policy introduced by the Morrison government in 2021 – that Australia’s emissions would be “net zero” by 2050.

That is, when all sources of emissions such as burning fossil fuels are added up and the ways emissions are drawn out........

© The Guardian