“Fossil fuel behemoth:” The climate cost of Australia’s addiction to coal and gas
Political bipartisanship across successive Australian governments has overseen a massive expansion of oil, gas and coal production despite promises to act on climate change over the last three decades, a new report suggests.
Australia has established itself as “a fossil fuel behemoth” over the past 30 years since the IPPC released its First Assessment report in 1990, with the country exporting increasing amounts of fossil fuels even as domestic emissions fall.
In the 15 years after the First Assessment Report, the burden of Australia’s fossil fuel exports doubled. It doubled again between 2005 and 2020, driven by a massive increase in coal and gas exports.
During this time the Australian government was variously led by both Labor and the Coalition.
Michael Poland, campaign manager for the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative in Northern NSW said it amounted to “a bipartisan consensus on expanding coal and gas.”
With the focus of the Paris Agreement on domestic use of fossil fuels, the US, Canada and Australia have been able to rely on the “drug dealers defence” – that if they don’t sell a particular fossil fuel, someone else will.
The government has approved 19 fossil fuel projects since major flooding occurred in 2022.
The report found 48% of the world’s internationally-traded metallurgical coal and 19% of thermal coal originated in Australia, making the country the second-largest exporter of each, respectively.
Australia’s LNG exports have increased seven-fold since 2005, with the country now producing 20% of all internationally-traded LNG.
Meanwhile the country currently has 30 new coal and gas projects at various levels of development, with a conservative estimate suggesting this could add 18.6bn tonnes of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
The possibility that a cyclone such as Alfred might make landfall in South East Queensland was previously described in 2021 as a “nightmare scenario” by the Australian insurance industry owing to high population density in the region.
But Australia has been increasingly rocked by large natural disasters likely to have been made worse by climate change, including a developing drought in South Australia, widespread flooding across New South Wales in 2022, and the Black Summer Bushfires.
As of 2021, climate change was costing the country $39bn a year, with this figure expected to rise to $73bn by 2060.
Currently 16 governments have endorsed a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty including Colombia, Pakistan, and Pacific countries such as Fiji, Nauru, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Tonga.