In the closing backroom negotiations at the United Nations climate conference in Madrid this week, the full impact of Australia’s proposal to use accounting tricks to nullify its commitments to cut carbon emissions became abundantly clear. In response, India for the first time proposed using credits from old "clean development" projects under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol as a way to water down the targets it committed to under the Paris Agreement in 2015.

Bushfire smoke in Sydney this week. Credit:Peter Braig

Prime Minister Scott Morrison told us yet again on Thursday that Australia only accounts for 1.3 per cent of global emissions, so what we do at home makes little or no difference to the environmental outcome. But the tough-talking in Madrid turns that logic on its head. India is the world's fourth largest emitter. And Australia’s dodgy accounting proposals are stoking India – and other big emitters – to pollute more.

Australia’s (already inadequate) target under the Paris Agreement is to reduce emissions by 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. According to government projections released last week, Australia will need to reduce emissions by 395 to 462 million tonnes from 2021 to achieve its 2030 target, but it wants to use an estimated 411 million tonnes of “Kyoto credits” to do so. In other words, Australia foresees doing only 20 per cent of the job we committed to.

Any multilateral agreement is a package deal, a multi-faceted quid pro quo based on an assessment of what we’re willing to do by understanding what others are willing to do, collectively. If one country later comes into the room and says, "Hey, we reckon we can meet our Paris targets, not by actually reducing emissions, but by cooking the books", it makes every other country feel they have been duped. They feel commitments made solemnly and in the common planetary interest are not worth the paper they were written on. It risks others walking away.