Young Canadians Put Ottawa’s Climate Record on Trial - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Fifteen young Canadians will take the Federal Government to court in Vancouver
on 26 October, arguing that its climate policies violate their constitutional rights

Key Points

Fifteen young Canadians allege that successive federal governments have violated their Charter rights through climate inaction.[1] The plaintiffs want the court to declare a breach of their rights and order the government to produce a climate recovery plan.[2] The plaintiffs, aged 17 to 24, include Kira Young, who fled Yellowknife during the 2023 wildfire emergency.[3] Federal research found Canada had warmed nearly twice as fast as the global average since 1970.[3] A Montana judge dismissed a comparable youth climate case in October 2025, citing legal barriers to standing and remedies.[4] In Australia, the Federal Court rejected a climate duty-of-care claim brought by Torres Strait Islander elders in 2025.[5]

In the summer of 2023, as wildfires threatened Yellowknife, Kira Young packed the family car and headed south. 

The evacuation order covered almost all of the city's 20,000 residents. 

Three years later, Young, now 20, is preparing to confront the Canadian Government over the climate policies she believes are putting her generation at risk.^[3]

Young is one of 15 plaintiffs in La Rose v His Majesty the King, a landmark challenge alleging that successive federal governments have breached their obligations under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

The constitutional case begins in Vancouver on 26 October, with hearings expected to run for about five weeks.^[6]

The constitutional challenge

At the heart of the case is section 7 of the Charter, which protects the right to life, liberty and security of the person. 

The young plaintiffs argue that the federal government's contribution to climate change threatens those rights. They come from seven provinces and one territory.^[1]

Their challenge extends beyond emissions targets. They also question federal support for fossil fuel industries and policies they say are inconsistent with the best available climate science. They want the court to declare that the government has violated their rights and require it to develop a climate recovery plan. The pretrial exchange of documents and expert evidence reportedly continued until January 2026.^[2]

The government has fought the case from the outset. Federal lawyers argued that the claims were non-justiciable, meaning they were matters the courts could not properly decide. In October 2020, Federal Court Justice Michael Manson struck out the claim. The plaintiffs appealed, keeping their challenge alive.^[2]

In December 2023, the Federal Court of Appeal unanimously ruled that the case could proceed to trial on the section 7 claim. Lawyers for the plaintiffs expect closing arguments during the week beginning 22 February 2027. The Vancouver hearing is scheduled to open at 9.30am on Monday 26 October.^[1][6]

Young lives already affected

The plaintiffs are now between 17 and 24 years old. For many, climate change is not an abstract debate about future risks. Their accounts describe the disruption already caused by extreme heat, wildfires, flooding and other forms of severe weather.^[7]

Some have watched floods damage family homes or extreme weather destroy crops. Others have endured smoke-filled summers, concerns about contaminated water and the erosion of cultural heritage and traditional ways of life. 

Their case argues that the damage reaches beyond property and the environment, affecting physical health, psychological wellbeing and the freedom to make decisions about their futures.^[7]

Lauren Wright, 22, wants governments to be held accountable when they miss emissions targets and then invoke competing priorities to explain their failure. She argues that the extreme events intensified by rising temperatures cannot simply become a recurring feature of young people's lives.^[3]

Albert Lalonde, 24, describes the difficulty of planning an adult life against the prospect of environmental collapse. Young, meanwhile, believes climate change remains a challenge Canadians can still address. Her experience of fleeing Yellowknife, after an 18-hour drive south with her family, gives that conviction a personal dimension.^[3]

In its 2020 defence, the federal government acknowledged that climate change is real and has significant effects on Canada. The legal dispute is therefore not simply about whether the threat exists. It is about the government's responsibility for addressing it and whether its actions expose young people to an unacceptable risk.^[2]

Climate science meets political reality

The case arrives as Canada confronts mounting evidence of a rapidly changing climate. A federal report released in September found that the country had warmed nearly twice as fast as the global average since 1970. 

Wildfires have burned record areas in recent years, while smoke from Canadian fires has travelled far beyond the affected regions. In the summer of 2026, that smoke briefly left Toronto with the world's worst air quality, according to the cited report.^[3]

At the same time, Canada's political direction has shifted. Prime Minister Mark Carney supports expanding oil production as part of an effort to reduce the country's economic dependence on the United States. He has also acknowledged that the emissions targets set by his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, cannot be achieved. Lalonde sees the shift as a retreat, saying Canada is “literally going back to the 1970s”.^[3]

Canada's climate accountability framework was established in 2021 through the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act. The legislation requires emissions targets, detailed plans and regular progress reports. Canada's 2030 target is to reduce emissions by 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels.^[8]

The legislation is now the focus of a separate legal challenge. In June 2026, Sophia Mathur, Marie Maltais and Shirley Barnea took the Carney government to federal court, arguing that its climate policy rollbacks breach the Act. 

The Canadian Climate Institute projects that Canada's emissions in 2035 will exceed the level required by the net-zero pathway by 91.9 million tonnes.^[8]

Together, the cases raise a difficult question for governments that legislate climate targets but struggle to meet them: what practical accountability follows when promised action falls short?

A growing international test

The Canadian proceedings form part of a wider wave of climate litigation aimed at holding governments to account. In 2024, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in favour of a group of older Swiss women who argued that Switzerland had failed to do enough to protect them from climate change. 

In 2025, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion on states' obligations under international law to protect the climate system for present and future generations.^[3]

The outcomes, however, have been far from uniform. In October 2025, Montana federal judge Dana Christensen dismissed Lighthiser v Trump, a youth-led challenge to President Donald Trump's executive orders supporting fossil fuels. 

The judge described climate change as a health emergency for children but concluded that the plaintiffs lacked standing, the legal right to bring the case. Several had previously been involved in the Juliana climate litigation.^[4]

Christensen also ruled that the court lacked authority to grant the remedies the young plaintiffs sought. The hearing had included testimony from youth plaintiffs and six expert witnesses, but the judge accepted the federal government's arguments on both standing and the limits of judicial power.^[4]

The Canadian case began in October 2019, when the 15 young people filed their claim just hours before Greta Thunberg was due to address a climate strike in Vancouver. The filing came a month after Thunberg and 15 other children lodged a complaint with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, challenging governments' failure to act adequately on climate change.^[9]

The contrast between the European, international and American proceedings highlights the legal uncertainty surrounding climate accountability. Courts may accept that climate change threatens human health and fundamental rights yet disagree about whether, and how, judges can compel governments to change policy.

The Australian parallel

Australia has already confronted a related question through the case brought by Torres Strait Islander elders Uncle Pabai Pabai and Uncle Paul Kabai. They sued the Commonwealth in negligence, arguing that the government owed them a duty of care in relation to climate change and the threats facing their communities. The Federal Court dismissed their class action in 2025.^[5]

The court found that the Commonwealth's control over national emissions targets did not establish the duty of care the elders claimed. It also identified difficulties in proving a direct connection between emissions and the particular damage suffered by the islands. 

Law firm Burges Salmon has described the litigation as a landmark challenge to national climate policy, rather than to an individual development project.^[5]

Australia now has a legislated target to cut emissions by 62 to 70 per cent below 2005 levels by 2035. Yet the government's own projections indicate that current policies would deliver a reduction of only 48 per cent by that year. Projected cumulative emissions for 2031 to 2035 would exceed the relevant emissions budget by 20 to 34 per cent.^[10]

The Canadian and Australian cases use different legal routes. The Canadian plaintiffs are relying on constitutional rights, while the Torres Strait elders pursued a negligence claim. Both, however, confront the problem of turning the government's responsibility for climate policy into a legal obligation that courts can enforce.

The Vancouver trial will test whether a government can be held constitutionally accountable for climate policies that young people say threaten their lives, health and future choices. At stake is not only the record of successive Canadian governments, but also the extent to which courts can intervene when political commitments fail to match the scale of the climate threat.

International decisions offer no settled answer. European and international rulings have recognised significant state responsibilities, while the Montana case demonstrates the procedural and constitutional obstacles that can defeat even a strongly argued youth challenge.

For Australia, the implications are particularly relevant. The Torres Strait elders' negligence case failed, while current emissions projections point to a substantial gap between national policy and the 2035 target. 

Whether the Canadian plaintiffs can establish a constitutional remedy may help shape the wider debate over how governments are held accountable for climate promises they make but do not deliver.

References

1. Unanimous Federal Court of Appeal decision paves path to trial for youth-led climate case (Pacific Centre for Environmental Law and Litigation). Summarises the December 2023 appeal ruling that allowed the La Rose case to proceed to trial under section 7.

2. La Rose v. His Majesty the King (Climate Case Chart). Provides the case history, the plaintiffs' claims, the federal government's defence and the trial arrangements.

3. Young Canadians sue government over alleged climate failures (AFP via eNCA, 6 October 2026). Reports on the plaintiffs, Canada's warming trends, political developments and international climate litigation.

4. Montana Court Dismisses Youth-led Lawsuit Challenging Trump Executive Orders Boosting Fossil Fuels (Inside Climate News, 16 October 2025). Examines Judge Christensen's reasons for dismissing Lighthiser v. Trump.

5. Pabai Pabai: an analysis of a landmark judgment (Burges Salmon). Analyses the Federal Court's decision rejecting the Torres Strait Islanders' duty-of-care claim.

6. Youth v. Canada: Trial Headquarters (Our Children's Trust). Provides the trial schedule, including the 26 October start date, expected hearing period and anticipated closing arguments in February 2027.

7. The plaintiffs (West Coast Environmental Law). Profiles the young plaintiffs and the climate-related harms they describe.

8. Youth taking Carney government to court over alleged illegal climate rollbacks (The Pointer, 19 June 2026). Covers the separate legal challenge to Canada's climate policy rollbacks and the country's emissions targets.

9. 15 Canadian Kids Sue Their Government for Failing to Address Climate Change (Inside Climate News, 25 October 2019). Documents the original filing and its timing alongside Greta Thunberg's climate activism and child-rights complaint.

10. Australia's emissions projections 2025 (Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water). Provides official projections of Australia's emissions against its 2030 and 2035 targets.

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Stored Ocean Heat, a Record Pacific Peak and the Test Facing Australia - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Forecasters expect the strongest El Niño on record
to peak in December on a hotter planet

Key Points

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) put the odds of a record event at 75 per cent. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) forecasts a peak near +3.7°C.[1] [2] This El Niño could lift global land temperatures about 1.2°C and cause more than 450,000 extra heat deaths worldwide by February.[3] Australia's Bureau of Meteorology reports record upper-ocean heat and weaker trade winds across the western Pacific.[4] The national fire council AFAC flags increased bushfire risk across parts of six states and the Northern Territory.[5] India's monsoon finished 13 per cent below normal, an 11-year low, and threatens winter wheat sowing.[6] Australia's own risk assessment names First Nations and remote communities among the most exposed. NSW has approved coal mining at Hunter Valley Operations until 2045.[7] [8]

In January, Alice Springs (Mparntwe) endured 20 days above 40°C. 

Researchers who interviewed 30 First Nations people in central Australia found that homes trapped heat and power supplies faltered. 

Communities adapted by rescheduling activities and sharing cooling resources.^[9]

El Niño, a periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean, now strengthens toward the most extreme level on record. 

This event tests whether Australian governments have acted on the warnings they hold. 

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) forecasts a near-100 per cent chance that it persists through February 2027.^[2]

A Forecast Beyond the Record Books

In September, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) gave a 75 per cent chance that October to December would surpass every El Niño since 1950. It set the bar at +2.5°C on the Relative Oceanic Niño Index, a Pacific measure that removes tropical-wide warming. 

The agency also sees a better than 90 per cent chance of a very strong event during the northern winter.^[1]

The WMO forecasts central Pacific (Niño 3.4) temperatures near +3.7°C above normal for October to December. That reading would beat the previous seasonal record of +2.6°C from November 2015 to January 2016. The anomaly climbed from +1.6°C in June to +2.5°C in August.^[2]

The benchmark depends on the index. NOAA's relative index still ranks 1997-98 above the current reading, while daily Niño 3.4 data show a new extreme. On 21 September the daily value hit +3.08°C, topping the +3.02°C of November 2015.^[3]

The Bureau of Meteorology declared El Niño on 16 June as Niño 3.4 readings passed the +0.8°C threshold. The weekly relative Niño 3.4 value reached +2.72°C in late September. Further intensification looks likely during the rest of spring.^[4][10]

Borrowed Heat on a Hotter Baseline

El Niño releases heat the ocean has already stored beneath the surface. WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo told the Global Heat Forum that this ocean is the warmest on record. Strong events therefore often coincide with some of the hottest years on record, as in 2024.^[2]

Climate Council scientists place this event in an Australia significantly hotter than 120 years ago. Atmospheric carbon dioxide has reached its highest level in 800,000 years. Andrew Watkins says today's La Niña years run hotter than El Niño years that counted as hot last century.^[10]

The University of Chicago's Climate Impact Lab estimates that this El Niño could lift global land temperatures about 1.2°C. By February, that heat could cause more than 450,000 additional deaths worldwide. NOAA climate scientist Nathaniel Johnson expects the peak to arrive within the next few months.^[3]

Whether climate change strengthens El Niño itself remains contested. Johnson says the science remains unsettled on how warming affects an event this extreme. Climate scientist Nathan Lenssen notes that a warmer ocean gives El Niño more energy to release.^[3]

The Machinery Beneath the Surface

The earliest warning signs sat below the surface. The Bureau reports that equatorial upper-ocean heat in July reached the highest level on record since 1979. That reserve fuels further warming at the surface, according to the Bureau.^[4]

Atmospheric signals followed the ocean heat. Trade winds, the steady easterlies that push warm water westward, have weakened or reversed across the western tropical Pacific. The Southern Oscillation Index, the Tahiti-Darwin pressure difference, averaged -29.1 in July, the most negative July on record.^[4]

NOAA says the coupled ocean-atmosphere system reflects a strengthening El Niño. Coupling means the warm ocean and the shifting winds and rainfall amplify one another. Convection and rainfall have intensified from the central to the eastern Pacific.^[1]

Strength and ocean heat reserves also set the event's lifespan. The Bureau expects warming to continue through spring and peak in late spring or summer. It expects the event to persist into autumn 2027.^[4]

Record Strength, Uneven Consequences

A record Pacific signal delivers uneven local outcomes. The Bureau stresses that El Niño is only one of many influences on Australia's seasonal weather. The Indian Ocean Dipole, the sea-surface temperature gap between the eastern and western tropical Indian Ocean, also steers rainfall.^[4]

The Australasian Fire Authorities Council (AFAC), the national council for fire and emergency services, has published its spring outlook. It flags increased bushfire risk in parts of six states and the Northern Territory, though fires can still strike elsewhere. Below-average rainfall has raised that risk in eastern Tasmania and parts of Victoria.^[5]

Overseas, impacts spread beyond the tropics by late fall. Johnson expects more rain over the southern United States and drier conditions in the Pacific Northwest. Lenssen cautions that ocean warming has made some historical mid-latitude changes less likely, as California's modest 2023-24 rainfall showed.^[3]

Oceans around Australia already run warm. In early August, waters off southern New South Wales and eastern Tasmania ran 2 to 3°C above average. The Bureau reports that global sea-surface temperatures remain at record levels.^[4]

Who Pays the Price

India's southwest monsoon finished 13 per cent below normal, an 11-year low, according to rating agency ICRA. Farmers planted 1.2 per cent less area to kharif, the monsoon-season crop, than a year earlier. Low reservoir storage in Punjab and Rajasthan also threatens winter wheat sowing, ICRA warns.^[6]

Physician Kate Charlesworth says extreme heat causes about 10 times more hospitalisations than any other extreme weather. Households also paid up to $700 more for home and contents insurance in 2025 than a year earlier. Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie says Australians bear the second-highest disaster costs in the world.^[10]

The Australian Climate Service released Australia's first National Climate Risk Assessment in 2025, identifying who faces the greatest risk. Those groups include the elderly, the very young, people with health conditions, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Remote residents ask for local housing design that withstands heat, shaded communal spaces and timely repairs.^[7][9]

Planning decisions on fossil fuels proceed beside those findings. The NSW Independent Planning Commission has approved extending Hunter Valley Operations coal mining until 2045. The Climate Council estimates the project would release more than 800 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.^[8]

The evidence converges on a single mechanism. El Niño releases heat that human-driven warming has already stored in the ocean. NOAA, the WMO and the Bureau agree on the scale of the coming peak.

Local outcomes remain uneven, and that uncertainty raises the value of preparation. Older Australians, remote First Nations communities and households facing higher premiums carry the heaviest exposure. Heat, fire and rising insurance costs can arrive together.

Responsibility rests with governments that hold the warnings and sign the approvals. Adaptation plans carry weight when emissions decisions follow the same evidence. Accountability begins with that alignment, and the coming summer will measure it.

References

1. NOAA Climate Prediction Center, ENSO Diagnostic Discussion (September 2026). NOAA's monthly outlook supplies the 75 per cent probability of a historic event and the better than 90 per cent chance of a very strong one.

2. World Meteorological Organization, Sea-surface temperatures reflect strengthening El Niño. The WMO's October update sets out the +3.7°C forecast, the record comparison and Celeste Saulo's explanation of stored ocean heat.

3. Science News Explores, 2026's El Niño is record-breaking. Two US climate scientists explain the daily record, the Climate Impact Lab heat-death estimate and the debate over climate change and El Niño.

4. Bureau of Meteorology, Southern hemisphere monitoring. The Bureau's monitoring page reports the Niño 3.4 values, ocean heat, trade winds, Southern Oscillation Index and outlook into autumn 2027.

5. AFAC, Seasonal Bushfire Outlook Spring 2026. The national fire council maps where fire authorities and Bureau forecasters expect increased bushfire risk this spring.

6. Business Standard, Monsoon deficit threatens crop output, adds to food inflation risks. The report summarises ICRA's analysis of India's 13 per cent monsoon shortfall and its risks for crops and reservoirs.

7. Clayton Utz, Australia's first National Climate Risk Assessment Report and National Adaptation Plan. The law firm's summary lists the groups the federal assessment identifies as facing the greatest climate risks.

8. The Canberra Times, Life of major coal project extended until 2045. The AAP report covers the approval of the Hunter Valley Operations extension and the Climate Council's 800 million tonne estimate.

9. Phys.org, Extreme heat is harming remote First Nations communities. Researchers who interviewed 30 First Nations people describe heat-trapping homes, unreliable power and community-led adaptation priorities.

10. Climate Council, Climate pollution and El Niño: a dangerous double act. Climate Council scientists and a physician outline the combined risk of El Niño, climate pollution, heat illness and rising insurance costs.

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A Gippsland Lake Reveals How Colonisation Primed Australia's Forests to Burn - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Colonisation loaded south-east Australian forests with fuel
a century before human-driven climate change began

Key Points

Researchers read 1,000 years of pollen and charcoal in a metre-long sediment core from Purghagoolah in Croajingolong National Park.[1] The Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation co-authored the Nature paper and provided cultural authority for research on Gunaikurnai Country.[2] Hot fires came first, driving a fourfold surge in eucalypts that thickened open woodland into fuel-loaded forest.[3] Cultural burning applies low-temperature fire through a responsive right time, right place approach that differs from government hazard reduction burns.[1] Victoria's pre-colonial and current vegetation maps look identical at the site, although pollen shows open woodland before colonisation.[2] Fire scientist David Bowman wants substantial, ongoing government investment in Aboriginal fire manager groups to restore fire regimes.[4]

Six researchers carried coring equipment through recently burnt forest to reach Purghagoolah, a lake in Croajingolong National Park. 

The park in East Gippsland ranks among south-eastern Australia's most fire-prone forests. 

The team set out to reconstruct vegetation, fire and erosion across the past 1,000 years.^[4]

The 2019-20 Black Summer fires burnt more than 1.5 million hectares in Victoria and killed five people. 

That season prompted the study. 

Researchers worked with several Aboriginal communities, focusing on wetlands, lakes and forests.^[5]

Reading a Millennium in Lake Mud

Purghagoolah, or Lake Elusive, covers about 40 hectares and reaches 21 metres deep. The lake sits in Gippsland, Victoria, on Gunaikurnai Country. Researchers took the core from the lake's deepest point.^[6]

The team extracted a sediment core, a cylinder of lake-bed mud, on 9 February 2021. Each layer records one slice of time. Dating with lead-210 and radiocarbon places the core between about 844 and 2021 CE.^[6]

Pollen grains reveal which plants grew near the lake. Charcoal particles record fire regimes, the pattern of how often and how intensely fires burn. Together these proxies, indirect measures that sediment retains, trace vegetation and fire through time.^[1]

Infrared analysis of the charcoal added fire temperature to the record. Researchers matched chemical signatures that plants leave at different burning temperatures against the sediment. Cool cultural fires gave way to hot wildfires after colonisation, with high-temperature charcoal rising from the mid-nineteenth century.^[3][7]

Gunaikurnai Country and the Research Partnership

The Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation represents traditional owners of the area. Researchers worked with the corporation to reconstruct 1,000 years of vegetation and fire history. Lead author Michael-Shawn Fletcher describes the pre-colonial landscape as cared for and managed.^[1]

The corporation co-authored the paper and provided cultural authority for research on Gunaikurnai Country. It contributed knowledge of Country that shaped the study design and the reading of the record. It also reviewed and approved the manuscript before publication.^[2]

Gunaikurnai elder Uncle Russell Mullett says his ancestors lived with towera, meaning fire, as part of daily life. Country turns extremely dangerous for people, animals and plants once towera stops, he says. The study supplies firm scientific evidence to support towera land management initiatives, in his view.^[5]

Change-point analysis, a statistical method that detects abrupt shifts in a time series, tested when the landscape changed. Across 5,000 reconstructions, the mean break in eucalypt cover sits at 1867 CE. That timing lies within the period of colonial frontier violence that removed the Gunaikurnai from Country.^[2]

How the Wildfire Loop Tightened

Historical evidence shows the Gunaikurnai regularly burnt the land until the British removed them violently in the mid-nineteenth century. For 800 years before that, the record shows open woodland of grasses and few trees. Woody shrubs then spread across the area.^[7]

Fletcher says the removal of the Gunaikurnai changed the balance of trees and shrubs and drove more fires. He dates the shift to a land use change that preceded climate change by more than a century. Hot fires then triggered eucalypt recruitment, the establishment of new seedlings, and the eucalypts drove further fire.^[1]

Eucalypt cover rose fourfold, and open woodland became forest. Fire temperatures climbed and soil erosion increased as the landscape changed. Those changes preceded human-caused warming, so land use set the stage for the climate-driven fires.^[2]

Researchers call this cycle a catastrophic wildfire loop. Each hot fire produces dense regrowth that primes the next blaze. Fletcher says climate now largely drives the loop, though the initial change came from land use.^[1][5]

Cultural Burning and Mainstream Management

First Nations people practise cultural burning, using low-temperature fire to keep land safe and productive. Communities still apply it in parts of Australia today.^[1]

Practitioners follow a responsive right time, right place approach. Government agencies run prescribed hazard reduction burns, planned fires that cut fuel, and those methods differ. The research gives scientific evidence for the value of cultural burning, Fletcher says.^[1]

The paper concludes that restoring cultural burning and supporting Traditional Owners is essential to mitigating wildfire risk. Croajingolong has long carried a pristine wilderness label, yet it is among south-eastern Australia's most repeatedly burnt areas. Fletcher says the forest people protect there is a product of colonisation, and that legacy now imperils its survival.^[3]

Fletcher hopes the findings open a conversation about possibilities for a new future. In that future, communities could start getting control of the catastrophic fire problem. Integrating Indigenous knowledge into modern fire management underpins that prospect, he says.^[1]

Scientific Significance and Accountability Gaps

University of Tasmania fire scientist David Bowman, who sits outside the author team, calls the research significant. He says the research adds to a growing realisation about the legacy of lost Indigenous fire management. He calls long-term records critically important for tracing how fire regimes respond to climate.^[1]

One big question in wildfire science, Bowman says, is how unprecedented current fire events are. Introduced animals and, in places, introduced plants have worsened the changes, though lost traditional fire management remains very significant. He calls the research a pipe opener for a conversation about managing landscapes as the fire crisis worsens.^[1]

Bowman calls the evidence very convincing that the loss of Indigenous fire management drove drastic changes in fire regimes. He wants trials of thinning for overgrown forests and cultural burning, with substantial ongoing government investment. Professor Trent Penman of the University of Melbourne says fire predictions have underestimated human influences.^[4]

Victoria's pre-1750 vegetation map models potential natural vegetation from climate and soils, then adds historical records and explorer accounts. At Purghagoolah that map and the 2005 map look effectively identical, although pollen shows open woodland. The authors say the national baseline wrongly treats post-colonial vegetation as the natural reference condition.^[2]

The Purghagoolah record shows colonial land use loaded south-east Australian forests with fuel long before warming began. Climate change now amplifies a vulnerability that official baselines treat as natural.

Vegetation baselines and the wilderness label for Croajingolong rest on assumptions that this evidence challenges. Agencies that manage these forests carry responsibility for testing those assumptions against the sediment record.

Traditional Owners hold knowledge that kept this landscape stable for centuries. Governments now face the task of funding Traditional Owner-led fire management, a step that scientists such as Bowman consider urgent. Accountability for the fire crisis therefore extends beyond emissions to the land management decisions that shaped these forests.

References

1. ‘Catastrophic wildfire loop’ created after colonisation left parts of Australia more at risk from bushfires, study finds. Guardian Australia report on the Nature study, with comments from lead author Michael-Shawn Fletcher and fire scientist David Bowman.

2. Australia’s current wildfire crisis linked to colonial land-use change. Peer-reviewed Nature paper by Fletcher and colleagues, including the Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation, reconstructing 1,000 years of vegetation and fire at Purghagoolah.

3. Australia’s bushfire crisis linked to colonial land-use change. University of Melbourne media release summarising the sediment findings, the fourfold eucalypt surge and the infrared charcoal analysis.

4. BRIEFING ALERT: Australia’s current bushfire crisis linked to British colonisation. Australian Science Media Centre briefing with expert reaction from Professor David Bowman and Professor Trent Penman.

5. Indigenous cultural burning could break catastrophic bushfire cycle, study finds. Australian Associated Press report, republished by Dubbo Photo News, quoting Fletcher and Gunaikurnai elder Uncle Russell Mullett on the study and towera.

6. Multiproxy palaeoecological record from Purghagoolah (Lake Elusive), Gippsland, southeastern Australia. PANGAEA dataset by Fletcher and Romano documenting the core site, collection date and age range.

7. Australia’s bush fires got worse after British colonization: this is why. Nature news report explaining the pollen and charcoal reconstruction and the loss of Indigenous burning.

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Australia’s Crocodile Tears in the Pacific - Gregory Andrews

Lyrebird Dreaming  –  Gregory Andrews

Author Gregory Andrews is: Founder and Managing Director of Lyrebird Dreaming A former Australian Ambassador and High Commissioner in West Africa Australia’s first Threatened Species Commissioner A leader in Indigenous policy

Anthony Albanese’s social media is currently full of the Pacific. Photos from Tuvalu. Pacific leaders in floral blue shirts. Smiling children. Listening faces. Blue water surrounding islands whose future is threatened by rising seas.

“Climate change isn’t a future challenge for the Pacific. It’s a daily reality,” Albanese posted from Tuvalu this week. He also declared that the Pacific is on the “front line” of climate change and that for some island nations it represents a threat to their very existence.

He’s right. And that’s precisely what makes Australia’s behaviour so difficult to stomach.

Because while our Prime Minister spins climate empathy stories in the Pacific, his government continues facilitating expansion of coal and gas industries like there’s no tomorrow. That isn’t climate leadership. It is the central contradiction at the heart of Australian climate diplomacy.

Listen to the Pacific - but actually listen

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has been making much the same pitch. In Fiji she urged the world to “come to the Pacific” and see for itself the reality of climate change. Australia says its diplomacy is designed to elevate Pacific voices and put Pacific priorities at the centre of global climate negotiations. Great. So what are those Pacific voices actually saying?

Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Feleti Teo warned fossil-fuel expansion by countries such as Australia represents a “death sentence” for his country. Vanuatu Climate Minister Ralph Regenvanu said the very least Australia should do is stop expanding fossil-fuel production.

That’s the bit Canberra seems less enthusiastic about hearing. Listening to Pacific children describe climate change is important. But listening means more than nodding and posting the photograph afterwards.

The other Australia

There’s another Australia that doesn’t appear in the Pacific selfies. In September last year, the Albanese Government gave final approval for Woodside’s North West Shelf gas processing project to keep operating until 2070 - twenty years beyond Australia’s own net-zero deadline.

By February this year, the Climate Council counted 35 fossil-fuel project approvals under the Albanese Government. The Australia Institute says almost 100 new coal and gas projects are under development in Australia.

And last week, the Hunter Valley Operations coal expansion was approved at the NSW level, potentially generating about 809 million tonnes of greenhouse pollution through to 2045. 

But there was one encouraging development. While Albanese was in the Pacific talking about climate impacts, the High Court delivered a landmark judgment over the coal mine expansion, finding fault with the way its enormous downstream - or Scope 3 - emissions had been dealt with. The message matters because the law recognised that you cannot simply pretend the emissions from Australian coal disappear when the ship leaves Newcastle.

The atmosphere has never recognised the distinction between emissions produced here and Australian fossil fuels burned overseas. Perhaps our governments should stop pretending it does.

These are not rounding errors. Australia’s own Climate Change Authority estimates that the coal and gas we export generate more than one billion tonnes of CO₂ overseas each year - more than twice our domestic emissions. Climate Analytics puts Australia’s wider fossil-fuel export footprint at around 1.2 billion tonnes annually.

The atmosphere, as I have written before, doesn’t care which country’s spreadsheet the emissions appear on. Coal dug up here and burned in Asia, heats Tuvalu too.

Climate policy in one hand, fossil fuels in the other

To be fair, Labor has introduced some real climate policies. Australia now has a 2035 target of reducing domestic emissions by 62–70 per cent below 2005 levels, renewable energy is growing, and we’re financing renewable energy, adaptation and resilience projects in the Pacific.

But that makes the contradiction harder to explain, not easier. This is no longer old-fashioned climate denial. The Albanese Government accepts the science. It talks about 1.5°C. It acknowledges existential threats to Pacific nations. It funds adaptation. Then it keeps expanding the supply of the fossil fuels causing the problem.

The International Energy Agency’s net-zero pathway is unambiguous: no new long-lead-time oil and gas developments, and no new coal mines or mine extensions, are necessary for achievement of net zero by 2050. You can’t indefinitely reconcile that with approving fossil-fuel infrastructure lasting to 2070.

This is fossil-fuelled diplomacy

Penny Wong doesn’t personally approve coal mines or gas projects. But as Foreign Minister she’s selling Australia’s climate credentials abroad while serving in a government pursuing continued fossil-fuel expansionism.

That’s the problem. Australia is effectively offering Pacific countries money to strengthen coastlines against rising seas while continuing to dig up and export the fuels raising those seas. We help pay for the seawall while keeping the carbon pipeline open.

The Australia Institute and Australian Conservation Foundation were so appalled by this contradiction that this week they bought a full-page advertisement in the Fiji Times, apologising to Pacific nations for Australia’s continuing coal expansion. I’m sorry too.

And that should embarrass Canberra far more than any hostile question at a press conference. I’ve been writing for years that Australia can’t seriously claim climate leadership while expanding coal and gas. In 2023 I wrote that our fossil-fuel exports had to end. More recently I argued that physics doesn’t respond to political spin. Nothing happening in Tuvalu this week changes that argument. It just makes it more urgent.

Anthony Albanese is right to listen to Pacific children. Penny Wong is right to ask the world to listen to Pacific nations. Now Australia needs to listen too. Because the Pacific doesn’t need our crocodile tears. It needs us to stop making the problem worse. And by the look on this girl’s face, she’s not impressed!

Photo from Chris Bowen’s social media feed

Gregory Andrews Climate Change Articles

• Community vs Coal: Climate’s ‘The Castle’ Moment
• Climate and National Security: why is Albanese keeping the evidence secret?
• Climate Warming Faster Than We Planned For?
• Weather Whiplash: Fasten Your Seatbelts
• Australia’s Flagship Climate Policy Is Failing to Cut Emissions
• Winter's Here, The Snowfields Are Open, But There's No Snow
• Worried About Climate Collapse? Here's Ten Things You Can Actually Do
• Fossil Fuel Fascism: When a Dying Industry Tries to Take Democracy With It
• Climate Policy Counts Dollars and Tonnes. What if We Counted the Dead?
• The Climate Crisis is a Health Crisis
• The Science Is In: Global Warming Is Accelerating
• While We Watch Iran, the Planet Keeps Burning
• Have your say on Canberra's next Climate Strategy: It will be make or break
• Science Warns of Future Where Billions Bake
• Two Years to 1.7°C: the “Prediction Game” We Can't Afford to Lose
• Emergency Photo Ops Aren't Climate Leadership
• Why Fascists Reject Climate Science
• Don't Be Distracted: Earth's Life Support Systems Are Collapsing
• Diesel rebates for miners and a new EV tax? Australia's climate policy double-think
• What Gas is That? Get to Know Your Climate Pollutants

Coal Approvals Test Australia's Climate Promise to the Pacific - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Fresh coal and gas approvals have strained Australia's standing
with Pacific neighbours before the Fiji pre-COP talks

Key Points

Tuvalu's Prime Minister Feleti Teo calls planned fossil fuel expansion in Australia and elsewhere a “death sentence”.[1] New South Wales approved a 19-year extension of Hunter Valley Operations to 2045, with estimated emissions of 809 megatonnes.[2][1] About 98 per cent of the mine's emissions are Scope 3, released when importing countries burn the coal.[3] Bowen's $7.29 million Pacific package forms part of an existing $50 million energy partnership.[4][5] Renewables supplied 49.9 per cent of east coast grid generation in late 2025, against an 82 per cent target for 2030.[6] Australia endorsed the 2018 Boe Declaration, which names climate change as the single greatest threat to Pacific security.[1]

Marica Malumuca, 66, likens her tent in Fiji to a balloon when heavy rain bulges the canvas. 

Two cyclones cracked the ground beneath her village of Nabavatu in 2021. She has waited five years in a temporary settlement of 37 tents.^[1]

That story sits behind the pre-COP31 talks, a set of preparatory meetings now under way in Fiji. 

The meetings precede November's United Nations COP31 climate summit. 

Canberra promotes renewables at home, yet Pacific governments keep pointing to its coal and gas exports.^[1]

A “Death Sentence” and the Pacific Response

Tuvalu's Prime Minister Feleti Teo calls planned fossil fuel expansion in Australia and elsewhere a “death sentence”. 

Some Pacific leaders repeatedly call on Australia to stop expanding fossil fuel projects.^[1]

Tuvalu and Vanuatu lead the public criticism of Australia's latest approvals. Vanuatu's Climate Minister Ralph Regenvanu says Australia should at minimum stop future expansion, and it fails to do so. Fiji's Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka says the best help Australia can offer is renewable energy support.^[1]

Tuvalu averages only two metres above sea level and faces inundation as early as 2050. In Fiji, cyclones have left families living in tents. More than half of Pacific infrastructure sits in coastal areas exposed to rising seas.^[1][7]

UNSW researcher Wes Morgan says emissions from coal and gas exports more than double those of Australia's domestic economy. He argues that this record contradicts the partnership narrative Canberra pursues with Pacific island countries. He calls the export of coal and gas Australia's biggest contribution to the climate crisis.^[1]

Hunter Valley Operations and Fossil Fuel Approvals

Extending Hunter Valley Operations would add an estimated 809 megatonnes of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere. A megatonne equals one million tonnes. The plans also allow the mine to extract an estimated 430 million tonnes of coal.^[1]

The New South Wales Independent Planning Commission approved a 19-year extension of the mine on 30 September. Glencore and Yancoal can now mine to 2045 at the largest coal project in the state's history.^[2][3]

About 98 per cent of the project's emissions are Scope 3, released when importing countries burn the coal. The commission acknowledged that share in its decision. Paris Agreement accounting counts emissions where fuel burns, so exported coal never appears in Australia's national inventory.^[3]

Resources Minister Madeleine King opened a new gas project in the Northern Territory's Beetaloo Basin. A day later, at the Pacific Islands Forum, Vanuatu's Climate Minister Ralph Regenvanu said Australia was doing too little.^[1]

Climate Finance and the Funding Gap

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen announced a $7.29 million package to accelerate renewable energy across the Pacific. The money funds grid modelling, technical experts and an early careers program for energy professionals. A separate memorandum of understanding backs Vanuatu's transition, and the announcement quotes one regional figure.^[4]

Expansion of gas and coal is a “slap in the face” for Pacific governments, ABC News reports. Those governments seek a partner on what they see as an existential threat. Aid and resilience funding sit awkwardly beside exports that deepen that threat.^[1]

The $7.29 million forms part of the $50 million Australia-Pacific Partnership for Energy Transition, known as APPET. Attendees noted that the package repeats an earlier announcement rather than adding new money.^[5]

The Vanuatu memorandum commits Australian tools and expertise to integrate cheap solar energy into Vanuatu's grid. It also supports a skilled local workforce. Bowen says the agreement strengthens Vanuatu's energy sovereignty.^[4]

Domestic Policy and Renewable Commitments

The Albanese Government targets 82 per cent renewable electricity by 2030. Renewables supplied 49.9 per cent of generation in the National Electricity Market, the main east coast grid, in late 2025. Bowen says Australia remains on track while conceding challenges.^[6]

The NSW Net Zero Commission, an independent state body, advised that new coal extensions conflict with legislated targets. Those targets sit in the state's Climate Change (Net Zero Future) Act, and the advice cites the Paris Agreement. The planning commission approved the mine anyway, reasoning that importing countries will account for the emissions.^[3]

The Australian Greens demand that Labor rule out federal approval for the project before COP31. They say the decision now sits on the desks of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Environment Minister Murray Watt. In their view, Pacific talk of climate leadership contradicts approving hundreds of millions of tonnes of new coal.^[8]

Bowen defends Australia's approach by pointing to progress on renewable energy. The mine still needs federal approval under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. That national law guards threatened species and ecosystems, and environment groups urge Canberra to reject the project.^[9]

Diplomatic Pressure and Climate Leadership

Australia serves as President of Negotiations for COP31, the United Nations climate summit in November. The Australia Institute and Australian Conservation Foundation ran a Fiji Times advertisement apologising for the coal expansion. Some Pacific leaders question Australia's climate record, which tests its credibility as lead negotiator.^[8][9]

Australia joined Pacific Islands Forum leaders in endorsing the Boe Declaration on Regional Security in 2018. The declaration names climate change as the single greatest threat to Pacific livelihoods, security and wellbeing. It also commits signatories to limit global warming to 1.5°C.^[1]

At the pre-COP meetings, Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard said world leaders must listen to Pacific communities and act. She warned that concern without action offers no defence against rising seas.^[9]

The Falepili Union, a climate and security treaty with Australia, takes its name from the Tuvaluan word for good neighbourliness. Weeks after Tuvalu ratified it in 2024, climate minister Maina Talia called new fossil fuel projects “immoral and unacceptable”. He said the approvals questioned Australia's claim to be a “member of the Pacific family”.^[10][7]

Conclusion

Australia offers the Pacific solar funding, grid modelling and a leading role in climate diplomacy. It also approves coal and gas projects that Pacific governments describe as a threat to their survival. Both facts shape how Pacific neighbours judge Canberra.

The evidence shows a gap between domestic progress and exported emissions. Roughly 98 per cent of the Hunter Valley emissions fall outside Australia's national inventory. The Pacific funding also draws on an existing program.

Accountability now rests with federal decision makers. The fate of Hunter Valley Operations will show whether climate diplomacy shapes resource governance. Communities from Nabavatu to Tuvalu will judge the answer.

References

1. Pacific leaders challenge Australia's fossil fuel expansion ahead of pre-COP31 talks in Fiji. ABC News report carrying Teo's warning, Regenvanu's criticism, the 809 megatonne estimate, the Boe Declaration and the Fiji displacement account.

2. Largest climate policy failure: Giant NSW coal mine extension approved, with conditions attached. Renew Economy report on the Independent Planning Commission approving the full 19-year extension to 2045.

3. NSW's largest coal mine project is set to expand. Here's what authorities got wrong about the trade-offs. Expert analysis of the roughly 98 per cent Scope 3 share, the Net Zero Commission advice and the commission's reasoning.

4. $7.29 million to strengthen Pacific energy security. Australian Government media release announcing the Pacific package and the Vanuatu memorandum of understanding.

5. 1.5°C to stay alive: Pacific countries demand the world makes good on climate promises. Pre-COP explainer noting that the $7.29 million forms part of the existing $50 million energy partnership.

6. Bowen says renewables transition on track after 7 GW added to grid in 2025. Trade report on the 82 per cent target and the 49.9 per cent renewable share in the December 2025 quarter.

7. Australian climate action must go beyond 'lifeline' for Tuvalu. Lowy Institute analysis of Tuvalu's elevation, inundation risk and the origin of the Falepili Union's name.

8. Labor must reject Hunter Valley coal mine before COP31. Australian Greens media release setting out their demand on federal approval and Australia's COP31 role.

9. Australia to face Pacific heat on fossil fuels at climate talks. News report on Bowen's defence, the Fiji Times advertisement and Amnesty's call for action at pre-COP.

10. Australia's 'immoral' coalmine decision akin to drowning its Pacific neighbours, Tuvalu's climate minister declares. Guardian Australia report, republished by the Pacific Islands News Association, on Maina Talia's response after the Falepili Union.

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