Australia gives in-principle support for net zero by 2050

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s Cabinet on Monday will consider conditions the government’s junior coalition partner has placed on committing the national to a target of zero net carbon emissions by 2050.

The Nationals party’s in-principle support for the target, agreed at a meeting on Sunday, is a breakthrough for Prime Minister Scott Morrison who wants to take a more ambitious plan to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions when he leaves on Thursday for a U.N. summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

Nationals lawmakers were tight-lipped on the conditions the party had placed on their support.

Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce, who is also deputy prime minister, declined to say whether the party had demanded that Resources Minister Keith Pitt be made the fifth Nationals’ Cabinet minister.

Joyce also declined to confirm or deny that he had told his colleagues he opposed net zero.

“We never would have had to go into the negotiation process if the Nationals were 100% happy with where the proposition was,” Joyce told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Nationals deputy leader David Littleproud said further details of the agreement would be made public by early Tuesday.

“We worked through this calmly and rationally as a party,” Littleproud said, adding that the Nationals' amendments to the Cabinet proposal would protect jobs in rural Australia.

Reducing emissions is a politically fraught issue in Australia, which is one of the world’s largest exporters of coal and liquified natural gas. The nation is also one of the world’s worst greenhouse gas emitters per capita because of its heavy reliance on coal-fired power.

The rural-based Nationals have traditionally represented farmers’ interests, but are increasingly now seen as...