Flooding in Queensland, fires in the west and south east, heatwaves across the country. Yes, this is an Australian summer. But this is also an example of what summers look like under the influence of climate change.
As was noted in the recent report from The Climate Council and Emergency Leaders for Climate Action:
'Climate pollution from the burning of coal, oil and gas shaped the dangerous and extreme weather conditions that has driven recent fires'.
Research shows that between 2000 and 2023 the intensity and frequency of the worst fires in southern Australia rose sharply under more extreme weather conditions.
Climate pollution is turbo-charging Australian fire conditions, and it’s making fires more frequent, costly, intense, harder to fight, and less predictable.
Burning fossil fuels - petrol, coal and fossil gas - are major drivers of climate change. As a continent already being hit hard by the impacts of climate change – which includes worsening droughts, more frequent floods, tropical storms, longer heatwaves and changing fire seasons – it is in our interest to do our part in global efforts to reduce the emission of further greenhouse gases.
Among many things, this means ending our current reliance on the local use of, and export of fossil fuels like coal and fossil gas.
Please sign our letter to the Prime Minister, the federal Environment Minister and the federal Climate Change and Energy Minister.
The Hon Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister of Australia,
The Hon Chris Bowen, Minister for Climate Change and Energy
Senator the Hon Murray Watt, Minister for the Environment and Water
We must stop burning and exporting fossil fuels to avoid a climate catastrophe
Dear Prime Minister and Minister Bowen and Watt,
We welcome your efforts to strengthen the federal environment laws, your commitment to meaningful climate action and emission reduction targets, and support for renewable energy and storage. The Australian people want to see the federal government act decisively to protect land, water and climate.
But at present many new coal and gas projects are under various stages of development. One worrying example is the proposal by Whitehaven Coal to open Australia’s biggest new coal mine in the Bowen Basin, in Central Queensland. This will be a mega mine that will add huge volumes of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and destroy significant areas of important koala habitat to make way for its coal pits.
Coal and fossil gas are major contributors to global heating. In a benchmark report from 2021, the International Energy Agency (IAE) noted that to ‘give the world an even chance of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5°C’ then there can be ‘from today, no investment in new fossil fuel supply projects’. We have now passed the 1.5°C target, making it even more important for governments to, as the IAE puts it, ‘develop strong and credible policy actions’.
If we listen to mainstream science then Australia must accept the fact that we need to end the use of coal and gas in Australia as a matter of urgency and stop exporting fossil fuels.
There can be no new coal and gas projects or infrastructure and we must transition domestic energy use away from fossil fuels to a mix of renewables and storage, with energy efficiency reducing overall energy use.
Australia has built its economy partly through the mass scale use and export of fossil fuels. That no longer benefits our country and can no longer be justified in a time of global heating. More fossil fuels will lock us further into ecological disaster and economic pain. The cost of the 2019/20 Black Summer bushfires to our economy was estimated at $10 billion. The time has come to rapidly transition away from our historic reliance on fossil fuels to boost our economy and provide our domestic energy needs.
I urge your government to make the commitment to a rapid transition and an end to fossil fuel exports.
Sincerely,