It didn’t take long after Donald Trump and the Republicans swept the polls in the US elections for the Australian fossil fuel industry and its political enablers to do what they like to do best: Celebrate a victory at the expense of the rest of the world.
Members of the federal Coalition – in sync with Trump’s claims that climate science is a hoax and green energy is a scam – agitated for the party to drop the 2050 net zero target, along with the pretence that it cared about the climate. The NT government did much the same, celebrating the Beetaloo Basin carbon bomb as a gas-led recovery for its economy.
In Perth, oil and gas major Woodside – fresh from reports that it may get a 50-year extension to another carbon bomb, its processing plant on the Burrup Peninsula – hailed the Trump victory, and his pledge to “drill, baby, drill,” – as being good for the oil and gas industry, if not for the planet.
Over in Baku, where the hosts say that oil and gas is a “gift from the gods”, UN boss António Guterres said humanity’s use of fossil fuels is “torching the planet”, as the World Meteorological Organisation released new data confirming that 2024 will be the hottest year ever, and is already above the Paris target of 1.5°C.
“Humanity is paying the price,” Guterres said, referring not just to a series of natural disasters, but also, as UN climate chief Simon Stiel said, the fact that worsening climate impacts will put “inflation on steroids.” So much for Trump and gas “reducing the cost of living crisis”, as Woodside boss Meg O’Neill was telling the West Australian.
Andrew Forrest, the executive chair of mining giant Fortescue Metals and now Australia’s richest and most ardent green energy crusader, was not having a bar of it. As the US election results unfolded, Forrest used the company’s AGM to launch a remarkable direct attack on Woodside and oil giant Exxon that got lost in the wall of sound over the Trump victory.
It’s worth repeating, because these are the battle lines that will be drawn with growing intensity as the Trump Administration takes power and it and its enabled cronies and supporters start to throw their weight around.
Forrest is not the only person in the world agitating for rapid emission cuts, but he is probably the wealthiest, and is using his money, and that of his shareholders, to walk the talk.
“Global warming ladies and gentlemen, is not a forecast,” Forrest told the AGM. “You hear oil and gas companies prattle about stopping 1.5°C. Let me tell you, how ridiculous that greenwashing statement is. 1.5°C, the so-called crucial tipping point, is with us right now, it’s the threshold for dangerous warming,
“While our state’s response to climate change is dismally behind schedule, as I’m illustrating scientifically, we are in the grip of the world’s greatest deceivers companies like Exxon Mobil, and our own delivery stays very slow.”
Forrest outlined how Fortescue is part of the solution, committing $6.2 billion to the target of reaching real zero emissions by 2030, at least for its mining operations, as opposed to the net zero targets held by most corporates for 2050.
That spending plan include a planned 3 gigawatts of renewables and storage in the Pilbara, and a massive replacement of its diesel haul trucks, excavator, bulldozers and trains with mostly electric propulsion. That is already starting to happen at scale.
But Forrest had his toughest words for Woodside, whose logo is splashed across the Perth skyline, and its local media.
“(Woodside) is arguing that fossil fuels are critical to relieving cost-of-living pressures – when everyone knows that gas volatility and weaponisation of gas is what has been driving the cost-of-living crisis,” he said.
“It argues that gas is a cross over, with big ads on the front page of the West Australian, it’s a crossover to green fuel. Ladies and gentlemen, all gas is, is methane.
Methane is 80 times more dangerous over the next two decades where the world was either going to tip over the edge or survive. 80 times more dangerous than even carbon dioxide to global heating.
“It is a collective act of suspension of critical thinking to think we can embrace the fossil fuel industry while stopping climate change. The reverse is true.”
Forrest said Woodside’s position is not surprising, given that its leadership is “peppered” with former executive from Exxon Mobil, a company he noted faces multiple court actions for “lying and misleading firstly its own government for decades and secondly the global public for decades.
“It is the company that is trying to say in the blue ruse, that don’t worry we can produce hydrogen too, look over here it’s hydrogen but don’t look over here, we’ve just burnt way more oil and gas and coal to make that hydrogen, so called relying on carbon sequestration which is literally pumping carbon dioxide into the ground as a theory, waiting for the next idiot to come along to believe it.”
Forrest’s position is notable because of all the big corporates investing in the green energy transition, and mouthing the words of 1.5°C, nearly all are hanging on to the coat-tails of net zero by 2050, which means that they – and their lobby groups – are still arguing for a “steady transition” rather than a rapid one.
That, of course, is against what all the climate experts tell us, and all the evidence that is presented to the world, and its recent experience. Forrest, for all his perceived imperfections, is at least giving it a go.
“That’s why Fortescue is breaking up with fossil fuels. We no longer will be tied to a fuel that will hurt our company and destroys your future.” Why is that so hard for others to say, or do?
