Australia is in ‘climate denial’ and has missed its chance for a smooth transition: Australia Institute

Australia is in “climate denial” and has already missed its chance for a smooth transition from fossil fuels, the co-CEOs of the Australia Institute have warned.

Opening the Climate Integrity Summit in Sydney, economist Richard Denniss accused the Albanese government of saying it accepted climate science while continuing to approve and subsidise new coal and gas projects.

“Let’s be crystal clear: Australia is in climate denial,” he said.

“We are the third-largest fossil fuel exporter in the world,” he said. “And we are not transitioning away from fossil fuels. We are rushing headlong into them.”

Dr Denniss said successive Australian governments have been hypocrites about climate policy for decades, rolling out a “daily barrage of complicated climate policy that no one understands” while talking about targets, percentages, safeguards and net zero.

“That’s not science. That’s sick,” he said.

Since coming to power, the Albanese government has approved 37 new, expanded or extended coal, oil and gas developments, despite backing the COP28 agreement calling for a transition away from fossil fuels.

Co-CEO Leanne Minshull said climate disasters were slowly changing the way people live, including where they chose to spend their holidays, what events they attended and where they went to stay cool.

But she said the nation’s politicians kept telling “us that we can outrun, out-tech, out-negotiate and offset climate change”.

“Well, we won’t. We can’t,” she said.

“It’s already too late for a smooth transition out of fossil fuels. It won’t be gradual. It won’t be orderly. It will be bumpy and forced by physical and economic shocks.”

Ms Minshull argued it was time politicians started standing up to the fossil fuel industry and “leading like heroes”.

With the government yet to “pick a fight” with the gas industry, she said climate advocates had been left to push politicians further.

She said those pushing for stronger action were “aligning with and acting on the science”.

“They’re not accepting our political reality,” she said.

“They are committed to changing the political reality so that we can act in the way that science demands of us.”

Dr Denniss explained how carbon offsets followed the absurd logic that doing something good justified continuing to do harm.

“Do you know how we ended asbestos mining?” he asked the audience.

“That’s right, by the creation of asbestos offsets that allowed the ongoing but gradual phase-down of asbestos, as long as we employed lung cancer nurses to work somewhere else,” he said dryly.

“You laugh because it’s sick, but that’s what we’ve just done.

“Again, it’s okay to keep doing the bad thing because someone did a good thing. Something’s better than nothing. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is the country we live in.”

Dr Denniss said the path forward wasn’t complicated: reject new fossil fuel projects, end native forest logging and stop industry subsidies.

“You can’t tackle climate change when you’re beholden to the expansion interests of the fossil fuel industry,” he said.

If politicians were unwilling to take on the country’s biggest coal and gas companies, he said they should be honest about it.

“Can we at least admit it? Can we at least demand from the people we elect some form of honesty about what their priorities are, about what their policies are likely to do?

“And if it’s all too politically hard to take on the gas industry, admit it.

“Either let someone else have a go or tell voters this is as good as you can do and see how you go.”