3 September 2025

ALAN HAYES

 

DESPITE the ‘White House Lunatic’ decrying renewable energy, the science of climate change is clear - burning coal, oil and gas fuels climate change and increases the risk of disasters that are harming communities right now. In Australia, we need look no further than the Black Summer bushfires in 2019-20 and unprecedented Lismore floods in 2022.

 

And the damage is happening across the globe. Last October, twin hurricanes in the US – made stronger by the warming ocean – left a damage bill of more than US$100 billion. And hundreds of people died when a year’s worth of rain fell in one day in Spain.

 

On gloomy days – like, say, the election of a climate denier to the White House – it might feel humanity won’t rise to Earth’s biggest existential challenge. But there are many reasons for hope. The vast majority of us support policies to tackle climate change, and in many cases, the momentum is virtually unstoppable.

 

But like the addled-brained climate deniers, Mad MAGA-Trump is applying tariffs, levies and other mechanisms of the world’s biggest economy to induce other countries to burn more fossil fuels, believing that pursuing climate goals will jeopardise America’s economic and national security.

 

So, how does Trump intend to try and achieve his control and domination of other nation’s climate policies? First, the old favourite that the world now expects from the playground bully – applying tariffs, visa restrictions and port fees to countries that vote for a global agreement to slash greenhouse gas emissions from shipping.

 

Virtually all of the Trump administration’s trade deals include requirements that trading partners buy vast amounts of U.S. oil and gas. Not surprisingly, Trump's Administration quickly joined oil-producing countries, like Saudi Arabia, to oppose limits on the production of petroleum-based plastics.

 

Energy experts have called the level of pressure Trump is exerting on other countries worrisome. Scientists widely agree that to avoid worsening consequences of climate change, countries need to rapidly transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal power and hydropower.

 

Trump’s denial of climate change and his inane energy polices have caused U.S. electricity prices to soar to twice the rate of the country’s inflation. But Trump remains unmoved, falsely blaming renewable power for the skyrocketing prices and calling the renewable energy industry the “scam of the century”.

 

Yet the American gangster, ‘Mad MAGA-Trump’, continues to strong-arm nations and to retreat on climate goals with tariffs and threats. He has made no secret of his distaste for wind and solar in America. Now he’s taking his fossil fuel agenda overseas.

 

The MAGA climate madness continues in Australia

 

It comes as no surprise that the Coalition's climate policy hot air continues unabated – a fact that was revealed in our story on 6 August 2025: A Fox in the Henhouse.

 

The rhetoric that spewed out last week over Sussan Ley’s leadership of the Liberal Party and the fanciful BS of their gas policy, one would be excused for believing that a lettuce will soon be emerging to go head-to-head with her leadership.

 

Ironically though, while Anthony Albanese was telling his MPs during their caucus meeting that those in the opposition advocating the abolition of net zero emissions by 2050 were effectively denying the reality of climate change, Ley had established a review led by opposition climate and energy spokesman Dan Tehan with the aim of developing a policy on net zero to take to the next election.

 

But despite Ley’s review, all is not well in Coalition-land. Net zero has once again caused Ley numerous headaches – more aptly a full-blown civil war – as the climate deniers raised their fossil-fuel-heads with a plan to develop a domestic gas reserve, and to include the fuel in a capacity investment scheme, while at the same time seeking to dampen internal disquiet over net-zero emissions and tackle the government on energy policy. A number of Nationals and conservative Liberals want that policy commitment dumped now! It's little wonder then that the ‘climate gangsters’, just like Trump, want to set the skies ablaze from burning fossil fuel.

 

The Albanese government, however, is ready to announce its emission reduction target for 2035 in the coming weeks as well as changes being tabled by the end of the year to the Environment, Protection, Biodiversity and Conservation Act (EPBC).

 

Dealing with the Coalition, their gas reserve policy is only a tweaking of the energy policy that Peter Dutton took to the last election, which helped the Opposition fall on a rusty sword. Much to the disappointment of certain National Party fossil-fuel-heads, Ley is hoping to keep her leadership safe by watering down their fossil fuel mantra in an attempt to hoodwink the public into believing that climate change is a furphy.

 

Yet despite the policy tweaking, the Coalition's climate change stance emphasises economic impact, criticises ambitious targets, and prioritises fossil fuels, with a long-term nuclear power plan, with a focus on reducing the perceived disproportionate impacts on regional communities. Their proposed policies would dismantle existing renewable energy investments and regulations, leading to increased emissions and being inconsistent with Australia's Paris Agreement commitments.

 

The Coalition is critical of Australia's legislated 2030 emissions target and has cast doubt on the ability to meet it.

 

The Coalition argues that emissions reduction targets must consider the impact on the economy. They point to the fact that other large global polluters have fewer concrete plans for reducing emissions and question why Australia should take significant action if they don't.

 

Impact on climate

 

Energy policy experts from the Grattan Institute state that the Coalition's policies are inconsistent with the Paris Agreement's requirements for increasing emissions reduction targets, leading to net zero by 2050.

 

The Climate Council believes the Coalition's policies would lead to significant increases in climate pollution.

 

But not all is well in Coalition-land! Not all of Sussan Ley’s soldiers believe that the Coalition have got their energy policy right. Simon Kennedy, member for the Sydney seat of Cook, and one of the Liberal party’s two surviving inner-metropolitan MPs, has said voters see the Coalition as unserious on climate.

 

The Coalition is “wedging itself on climate crisis with the net zero debate,” Kennedy warned, suggesting the opposition could lose more seats to Labor if it opposes policies for net zero by 2050.

 

After a series of anti-net zero statements from Joyce and climate sceptic MPs, including Nationals senator Matt Canavan, Kennedy was the only Coalition MP to speak up for net zero policies.

 

And the environment?

 

Australia needs new environment laws that protect nature and strong laws that consider climate as well. The Howard era environmental laws aren’t working for anyone, except the big fossil fuel companies that continue to block any changes. With updated and fit for purpose environment laws we could build houses, safeguard the environment, save endangered flora and fauna and protect our climate.

 

Environment laws that protect nature must include:

 

• protection of critical habitat and forests

 

• stop species extinction

 

• a climate trigger

 

“The Greens have been ready and willing to negotiate with the Albanese Government for the past 3 years to fix our broken environment laws,” Greens spokesperson for the Environment Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said.

 

“The only thing standing in the way of creating laws that give clearer guidance and faster processing are the big fossil fuel companies who prefer the status quo and have repeatedly used their political muscle to prevent fixing the laws.”

 

It’s time to stop the environment tussels

 

Extreme politics and extreme weather go hand in hand, and both have to be confronted if we are to understand and overcome the political-environment crisis we are living through.

 

Around the world, powerful governments, financial institutions and fossil fuel companies are turning their back on climate promises and some are funding secretive lobby groups and far-right politicians that want to shift away from the progress that is needed.

 

A national climate risk assessment – which includes modelling of future climate damage, estimates of the number of people who could be killed by worsening heatwaves and a mapping tool that forecasts flooding risk in suburbs across Australia – has been handed to the government but remains unreleased.

 

Australia’s approach to climate risks is piecemeal and left to the whims of whichever party is in power - a scenario that has to change.

 

It's time to stop the climate and environment tussles - NOW!

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