One by one, the heat records tumbled. The highest ever winter temperature. A new Queensland winter temperature record. Records in major centres elsewhere. The hottest August in Australian history. The second hottest winter after 2023.
Weather is not climate, of course, but the upward trend is unmistakable. The temperature records all lean to the right. Not just here. The hottest June on record globally. Summer heat records in the United States. After a record hot summer of 2023, new heat records are being set in southern Europe.
Meanwhile Australia’s greenhouse emissions remain well above where they should be to meet the government’s target of a 43% reduction of 2005 levels by 2030. Our gas exports have fallen a little, but they remain at levels well above any time before the pandemic, and thermal coal exports, which have also fallen slightly, are expected to return to record levels in coming years.
The government is entirely indifferent to this contrast between Australia’s continuing addiction to fossil fuel exports and an ever-worsening climate crisis.
Just this week — with cabinet moving en masse to Perth to convince West Australians to keep Labor in majority government at the next election — Resources Minister Madeleine King and Trade Minister Don Farrell were spruiking the visit of the South Korean trade minister to the state as an opportunity to discuss importing South Korea’s carbon emissions to WA for “permanently storing carbon in our joint fight to achieve net zero. With limited carbon storage capacity, the Republic of Korea is looking to partners like Australia to progress carbon capture and storage projects and technology.”
Labor hasn’t just bought the snake oil of carbon capture, it’s now pressing it on other countries as the ideal tonic for fossil fuel-dependent economies to pretend they’re taking action to curb carbon emissions while the planet cooks. Or, as Labor calls it, the fight to achieve net zero.
The indifference, even insouciance, on the part of Labor towards a developing climate catastrophe has been one of the hallmarks of the Albanese government. It has confirmed, more than a decade after the Gillard government introduced a highly effective and enormously efficient carbon pricing scheme, that while contemporary Labor’s rhetoric on climate might differ from the Coalition’s — and it is committed to a renewable energy transition in a way that the Coalition, seemingly, never will be — it is indivisible from the Coalition on fossil fuel exports: they are to be encouraged, with billions of taxpayer dollars, along with the fiction of storing carbon emissions safely underground.
From the wider perspective of the pressing need for real, large-scale carbon abatement to avert what will, in human and economic terms, be permanent significant costs from a more extreme climate, the 2022 election was a missed trick. Labor’s ability to form a majority government without needing to rely on a crossbench with a serious commitment both to carbon abatement and reducing our fossil fuel exports has meant an expansion of those exports and taxpayer funding to enable further expansion into the future.
Only a minority government dependent upon climate-committed crossbenchers will deliver meaningful climate action in Australia. A majority government of either persuasion will simply mean more fossil fuel exports — which generate little in the way of tax revenue — and more taxpayer handouts to an industry that effectively charges us to make billions from a finite supply of fossil fuels.
From a climate perspective, the only good outcome from the 2025 election is both major parties falling short of 76 seats. Then we’ll see what records the winter of 2025 brings.
Is Labor doing enough on climate change? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
