Markets Overview
- ASX SPI 200 futures little changed at 7,435.00
- Dow Average up 0.5% to 36,100.31
- Aussie up 0.4% to 0.7322 per US$
- U.S. 10-year yield rose 1.2bps to 1.5613%
- Australia 3-year bond yield rose 2bps to 1.03%
- Australia 10-year bond yield fell 2bps to 1.80%
- Gold spot up 0.1% to $1,864.90
- Brent futures down 0.8% to $82.17/bbl
Economic Events
- 11:30am: (AU) RBA’s Ellis, Jones Appear at Parliament Committee
Australia’s bid to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 will only cut the amount of greenhouse gases being produced in the fossil-fuel dependent nation by a third compared with having no plan at all, according to government modeling.
The nation will still be emitting 215 million tons of emissions by 2050 under its new plan, compared with 316 million tons without it and 536 million tons last year, according to details released Friday.
Modeling shows the nation plans for international offsets to account for 94 million tons worth of reductions. The government expects to close the gap to net-zero with technological advancements emerging over the next three decades, though the report noted that the analysis isn’t a precise prediction of economic or technology trends.
The release of the modeling is unlikely to ease criticism of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s policies, with Australia — one of the world’s top suppliers of fossil fuel — under pressure during the COP26 summit to enact stronger short-term action to combat climate change.
Morrison’s Climate Plans Disappoint at COP: Bloomberg Australia
About 70% of the planned emission reductions are expected to come from the government’s “technology investment roadmap,” which prioritizes areas including clean hydrogen and carbon capture, “global technology trends” or “further technology breakthroughs,” according to the document.
Morrison, whose government relies on support from voters in communities with ties to fossil fuels, including coal-mining, is refusing to impose taxes on polluters, saying strict government intervention on climate change would add pressure on living costs and threaten businesses.
“Climate change will ultimately be solved by ‘can do’ capitalism, not ‘don’t do’ governments seeking to control people’s lives and tell them what to do, with interventionist regulation and taxes that just force up your cost of living and force businesses to close,” Morrison said Wednesday in Melbourne.
Other News
A 17-year-old teen from Brooks, Alta., just multi-tasked his way into the Guinness World Records.
Jesse Bradford now holds the record for solving the most Rubik’s cubes — 300 of them — on a unicycle.
He learned to ride in the summer of 2020, and decided to pair it with the puzzle he’d learned to solve in Grade 3.
“I probably had about 20 solves on there,” Jesse said of the first time he tried both.
Then, the thought occurred to him.
“I was like, ‘I wonder if there’s a world record for this,’” Jesse said. “So I looked it up, and it was 250.”
