This week the National Liberal Coalition has rewound the clock a decade. When Tony Abbott’s government abolished the Climate Commission in 2013, I knew it was a political act of climate vandalism. Abbott simply didn’t want to hear the facts: that pollution from coal, oil and gas were cooking our planet.
For a decade after, denial evolved: from shouting that global heating wasn’t real, to claiming it could be solved later.
While the LNP wallows in denial, the Albanese government is rewriting Australia’s most important environment law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. It’s critical that the PM doesn’t try to cut deals on this law with the same climate deniers who dismantled Australia’s climate ambition last time.
The last few weeks we’ve seen on display a Liberal National Coalition dominated by climate vandals, repulsed by renewables and trapped in a toxic relationship with expensive, polluting coal and gas. For years they have pretended that denial is debate. Now the Liberal party has openly abandoned net zero emissions by 2050 altogether, essentially saying let climate disasters rip, and to hell with our kids. It is the same approach that tore down a carbon price, dismantled the Climate Commission and wasted a decade in which we could have been getting a head start on building Australian jobs in renewables, electric vehicle batteries and green steel.
Let’s be clear: there is no credible reason to scrap our net zero target. The Liberal party’s decision would be laughable if it were not such a callous act of recklessness. Reaching net zero by 2050 or before has the overwhelming support of scientists, economists, industry, energy experts and governments around the world motivated by indisputable evidence. A sweeping majority of Australians, alongside peak business and civil bodies, back the target. All that is left is the stubborn ideologues shouting at the tide as it floods their front door.
What does net zero emissions actually mean? And is it different to the Paris agreement? – video
To hand such wreckers a say over the future of Australia’s environment laws would be madness. These are the same forces that unleashed a lost decade of climate inaction. The lesson from that period could not be clearer: when denialists set the terms, progress burns. That failure is only reinforced by the fossil fuel industry’s hold on our politics.
For two years Labor has promised that this reform will be a once-in-a-generation fix to Australia’s broken nature laws. The Great Barrier Reef has experienced the sixth mass bleaching event in a decade, but the package will allow new coal and gas projects to be approved without any consideration of their climate impacts. Under the government’s plan, fossil fuel corporations would need to disclose only a fraction of their pollution and an unverified plan to reduce it, and even that information would not be used to influence a decision.
The Albanese government has approved 32 new or expanded coal, oil and gas developments, including the North West Shelf expansion, Australia’s most polluting project in a decade. Together, these approvals will pump up to 12.8m tonnes of climate pollution into the atmosphere in Australia, making it harder for Australia to meet its own targets. The global impact is in the order of billions of tonnes of pollution.
And 42 more projects are in the pipeline. Many would run well into the second half of this century, some even beyond 2100.
Climate pollution is the biggest threat to our reefs, forests and wildlife. Any credible environment law must tackle it at its source. To claim the Safeguard Mechanism will sort it out later is folly. The Safeguard only applies after a project has been approved. It is like letting the arsonist start the fire, then hoping the firefighter can control it later. By then, the damage is under way.
We cannot afford more delay. Every fraction of a degree of heating harms our environment – and all of us that rely on it. Every new tonne of pollution makes the task harder. Australia’s laws must ensure that high-polluting projects cannot be waved through.
There is a better path. The government can still implement credible reform that increases protection for climate and nature, and without the now rejected ‘climate trigger’. That means three simple things. First, require all projects to fully disclose their climate pollution, including the emissions when fossil fuels are burned overseas. Second, make sure this information is independently assessed and used in decision-making. And third, allow the environment minister to put limits on projects that are incompatible with Australia’s climate targets, policies and international commitments.
Canada requires analysis of both direct and downstream emissions. The EU and the UK have similar standards. Last year, the UK supreme court ruled that ignoring the climate impact of new fossil fuel projects was unlawful. Australia is on the frontline of climate damage. We must not be shirkers.
When I look back on 2013, what stands out is not just that the Climate Commission was scrapped, but that the science was ignored. A decade later, the same political forces that tore down that work are trying to drag us backwards again. If the government cuts a deal with them, it risks repeating the mistakes of the Abbott era, sacrificing truth for expedience and progress for politics.
Australia has a choice. We can keep approving new coal and gas projects that push us further from safety, or we can finally pass a law that protects our magnificent environment, creatures and people.
Prof Tim Flannery is a climate councillor