A clean and healthy environment is a key aspect of Australian lifestyle and prosperity, and foundational to our tourism industry. We should continue to staunchly conserve our nature and wildlife, striving to be free of all pollution and litter, with clean air and water for future generations.
All that is quite distinct from CO2 emissions though.
Although a taboo topic in many circles, the jury is actually still out on climate change. Yes CO2 is increasing, and yes that is likely caused or exacerbated by human activity. But no, we’re not sure that will lead to a global catastrophe. We should have a lot more certainty before sacrificing our economy and quality of life in the hope of reducing it to zero in such a hurry.
Earth’s climate is complex, runs in cycles, and this epoch will almost certainly end in another Ice Age. Our descendants will be dismayed at our spending so much time and capital trying to reduce the temperature by a degree or two in an age of comfortable weather. Cold weather remains a greater threat than heat, and deaths from environmental causes have trended strongly down the past century:
Regardless, even if we were to suddenly cut Australia’s emissions entirely to zero, it wouldn’t even be noticeable on the global stage — China for example is increasing its emissions each year by a larger amount than our total. We can reassess later though, when the developing world gets on board.
It is hard to even find Australia’s emissions in the graph below — we are some fraction of the ‘Oceania’ segment, about 1% of the global total (while China’s emissions grow ~3-5% per year).
The argument is not about whether the world should reduce its emissions, but that Australia reducing them so aggressively has no tangible effect on the problem. We can still head down the reduction path, but more gradually, without sacrificing our economy and standard of living.
An urgent rush to Net Zero is pure virtue-signalling at our own very great expense, because again even if we cut to zero tomorrow, it would make no tangible difference — if that doesn’t sit well with you, I ask you to again look at the graph above, and imagine that yellow sliver is gone.