Australia’s ongoing addiction to fossil fuel exports is undermining the “enormous” success of the renewable energy transition and threatening national security, one of the nation’s top military experts has warned.
In a keynote address to the Clean Energy Summit in Sydney on Tuesday, the former chief of Australian Defence Force, retired Admiral Chris Barrie AC said the renewables industry had achieved “something extraordinary” getting the national electricity grid to an average share of 50 per cent renewables.
But Barrie, who since retiring from the military has turned his attention to the global fight against climate change, says Australia’s success with wind, solar and battery storage is only one part of the battle.
“The renewable energy industry has achieved something extraordinary with a historic transformation of the electricity system, but it is also a fact that every new fossil fuel project and every expansion in exports cancels out part of the progress being delivered by the clean energy industry.”
Federal Labor, which has set an interim emissions reduction target of between 62% and 70% below 2005 levels by 2035 and a renewable energy target of 82 per cent by 2030, has also approved 36 new, expanded or extended coal, oil and gas developments since coming to power in 2022.
Among these approvals is last year’s 40-year extension for Woodside Energy’s controversial North West Shelf development in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, which allows the nation’s biggest gas project to keep operating until 2070.
And it’s this contradiction that Barrie says risks undermining Australia’s climate credibility and undoing the work done by the shift to renewables.
“Renewables are just half the story, but phasing out fossil fuels is the other. And from that standpoint, Australian policy is contradictory and perhaps even delusional,” he told the summit.
“The Australian government has a clear policy of talking about and championing renewable energy, whilst avoiding, wherever possible, any discussion of climate impacts and how Australian coal and gas, including new licenses, are helping drive the world towards an unlivable planet.
“It is disordered and delusionary thinking to ask this industry to build the clean energy economy of the future while at the same time continuing to expand the industries fuelling climate breakdown.
“Whatever short-term income fossil fuel exports generate is overwhelmed by the deaths, destruction and decline in human security caused by accelerating climate disruption, costs that will continue accumulating for decades and be borne by communities, governments and future generations.”
Retired Admiral Barrie, who believes that the increasing risk of runaway global warming far outweighs conventional geopolitical concerns, says that climate disruption should be treated by governments as Australia’s defining national security challenge.
To this end, he is the Australian chair of the Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change and an executive member of the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group.
Image: S Vorrath
“I didn’t get involved with climate change and consequences until 2008. But since I did, I became quite alarmed and disturbed by the physics of what’s going on around our planet and what the consequences look like for the human beings that occupy it,” he told the Summit.
“As I spent over two decades arguing from inside defence and intelligence institutions as much as outside them … climate disruption is the most significant strategic threat Australia faces.
“This is a moment for clear-eyed reckoning. The world has become more dangerous, and climate disruption adds to that danger. The too slow pace of the energy transition and the faster-than-forecast climate impacts has added to the danger.
“We see even the current level of warming contributing to human insecurity, to civil disruption, and to intra- and interstate conflicts today.
“In times of crisis, especially when the future security of the nation is at stake, leadership means confronting the hardest problems head-on, as Australia has done during times of war and during the Covid pandemic,” he said.
“We are not short of technology. What we are short of is institutions willing to speak up and hold the line.
“Taking difficult issues off the agenda does not demonstrate leadership; it demonstrates hesitation. Sweeping problems under the carpet exhibits weakness, and outright denial looks like cowardice to me, wherever it comes from.”
On this topic, Barrie had even tougher words for the federal opposition, which has vowed to scrap Australia’s commitment to net zero emissions, slow the transition to renewables and keep coal generators open longer.
“We need to call out those who deny the science about climate change for what it is – blind ignorance!” Barrie told the conference.
“We cannot credibly claim to be addressing the climate emergency while simultaneously increasing the very emissions driving it.”
To join more than 29,000 others and get the latest clean energy news delivered straight to your inbox, for free, click here to subscribe to our free daily newsletter.
To support independent media, and combat AI slop, you can click here to make a one off donation or become a regular supporter of Renew Economy.
