“We see this working thoroughly in Australia: a robust concentrate on reducing domestic emissions and a policy that completely avoids coping with the export side,” says Jotzo. The Australian government elected in 2022 has set a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, but refuses to ban any recent coal or gas projects. It has promised a whole bunch of tens of millions of dollars for community batteries, solar banks and electric vehicle charging, however the country is the world’s second-largest coal exporter and has the third-largest coal reserves.
Given recent record-breaking droughts, temperatures, bushfires and flooding, one would expect the Australian government to rethink its continued coal, oil and gas extraction. But Polly Hemming, director of the climate and energy program on the independent think tank Australia Institute in Canberra, says the federal government is just too tied to industry to accomplish that. “Climate policy has been completely subverted. The industry sets the climate standards that it expects from governments,” he says. This influence is wielded political donationsindustry lobbyists (who are sometimes former politicians themselves and political staff) and intimidation campaigns against government motion on climate change. “Fear is a much stronger motivator than hope or optimism, which is why governments just regress,” says Hemming.
There is not any economic logic to this. The Australian government subsidizes fossil fuels to the tune of around A$11 billion (US$7.36 billion) per 12 months, while the fossil fuel industry employs fewer people than McDonald’s. Most firms extracting and selling Australia’s fossil fuel reserves are foreign-owned and pay little tax to Australian coffers, and most of what’s extracted is exported, Hemming says. Yet this “incredibly small handful of truly powerful corporate interests” still reigns supreme.
Which is ironic on condition that the authors of the IPCC argue that the economic and social advantages of mitigating climate change far outweigh the prices. The economic cost of air pollution alone —estimated in 2018 will amount to roughly USD 2.9 trillion worldwide, and can claim 4.5 million lives this 12 months alone – far exceeding the prices of climate change actions. Mitigation options resembling wind and solar energy, green infrastructure, energy efficiency, electrification of urban systems and reducing food waste are increasingly profitable in comparison with unusual business.
Despite the urgent must decarbonise, the multi-trillion-dollar energy sector just cannot activate a penny, says Samantha Gross, director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative on the Brookings Institution in Washington. “We must power the system we’ve as we transform it,” says Gross. “The energy system that uses these fossil fuels isn’t changing fast enough that we do not need them.” Gross says the recent gas crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine illustrated this, with some European countries restarting old coal-fired power plants to fill an energy gap that also exists despite the growing use of renewable energy.
And Gross argues that so long as there may be demand for fossil fuels, industry will provide them. “It’s going to be really hard to fight climate change from the provision side because fossil fuels are plentiful,” he says. advocates specializing in the demand side of the equation: more policies and laws that drive the shift away from fossil fuels, resembling much more investment in renewable energy, more and faster motion to impress the transport sector and using carbon pricing mechanisms to encourage and supporting the deployment of low-carbon technologies.
