When the Smoke Settles: The Social Cost of Climate Change in Canberra

Key Points

Renters, young people and outer-suburb residents face the greatest climate vulnerability in the ACT, with one in three Canberrans found to have low climate resilience. 1 During the 2019–20 Black Summer, Canberra's air quality exceeded hazardous limits on 42 days, driving an estimated 31 excess deaths and over 200 excess hospitalisations in the ACT. 2 Outer suburbs including Tuggeranong, outer Gungahlin and West Belconnen have less established tree cover, making them more exposed to urban heat as temperatures rise. 3 Climate change disproportionately harms people on low incomes, people with disability and First Nations peoples, according to ACT Council of Social Service. 4 With a 3°C rise, projections indicate up to 40 days per year above 35°C in Canberra, threatening outdoor workers, carers and community services. 5 A socially just climate adaptation strategy requires structural investment in social housing, energy efficiency and First Nations-led knowledge, not simply the resilience of individuals. 6

On New Year's Day 2020, the sky above Canberra turned the colour of rust.

Smoke from fires burning across southern New South Wales and in the ACT's own Namadgi National Park had settled over the city in an orange-brown pall.

For almost a month the air quality index at monitoring stations across the territory recorded levels far above what any public health standard was designed to accommodate.

At the Monash monitoring station in Tuggeranong, air pollution exceeded national health thresholds on 56 days that summer, 42 of them rated hazardous.²

To put that in proportion: fine particulate pollution reached roughly 25 times the hazardous threshold on 1 January 2020, a level comparable to the most polluted days in the world's most congested Asian megacities.

Canberrans who remember that summer describe the particular surreal horror of it: the eerie orange noon, the smell of burnt eucalyptus seeping through walls, the question of whether it was safe to take children to school, and the dawning realisation that there was, for many of them, nowhere to go.

That nowhere to go was not equally distributed.

Everyday Life, Equity and Vulnerability

Canberra is often described as a wealthy, well-educated city, and by aggregate measures it is.

In 2024 it was ranked the second-best city in the world for quality of life by the Oxford Economics Global Cities Index, drawing on indicators of health, education and income equality.⁷

That aggregate, however, conceals the texture of vulnerability that climate change reveals and deepens.

A major University of Canberra study surveying 2,671 residents found that one in three Canberrans has low climate change resilience, meaning they lack the financial resources, social networks or housing quality to safely weather heatwaves, smoke events or storms.¹

The study found that younger people, renters and residents of Gungahlin, a suburb of comparatively recent development with lower tree canopy density and higher proportions of renters, were among the most vulnerable.

Renters are placed in a structurally difficult position: they cannot retrofit insulation, install efficient air conditioning or plant shade trees without a landlord's permission, yet Canberra is already the second-most expensive city in Australia to rent in, tied with Sydney.⁸

For people on low incomes, the calculus of a smoke day is not simply one of comfort but of genuine risk.

With approximately 9 per cent of Canberrans living in poverty, primarily as a consequence of housing costs, the choice between running an air conditioner or paying for food is not a hypothetical.⁹

Older residents, particularly those living alone, face compounding risks during heatwaves: diminished physiological capacity to thermoregulate, limited mobility to reach cooling centres, and social isolation that means no one may check on them for days.

Students in share houses, many of them in energy-inefficient properties common in the inner north and inner south, similarly lack both the income and the lease security to demand improvements.

People with disability confront a further set of barriers: some medications increase heat sensitivity, many cannot easily access public transport to reach air-conditioned spaces, and those reliant on powered medical equipment face life-threatening risks during blackouts that can follow storm events.

The ACT Council of Social Service has stated plainly that climate change disproportionately harms people on low incomes, people with disability, people with chronic health conditions and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.⁴

These groups are also, not coincidentally, the groups most likely to be absent from formal climate adaptation consultation processes.

When government processes seek "community input" through online surveys, evening forums or written submissions, they structurally favour those with the time, digital access, language and civic confidence to participate, none of which are equally distributed.

Health, Mental Health and Wellbeing

The physical health toll of the 2019–20 Black Summer on Canberra has been documented with some precision.

Within the ACT, bushfire smoke was responsible for an estimated 31 excess deaths, over 200 excess hospitalisations for cardiovascular and respiratory disease, and 89 emergency department presentations for asthma during that season.²

A survey conducted in the immediate aftermath found that 97 per cent of people living in and around the ACT reported acute physical health effects from smoke, while 31 per cent said an existing health condition worsened and 16 per cent reported difficulty managing it.

Research by the Australian National University into community experiences of the smoke event found that the event was not merely a physical health crisis but a profound social and psychological one.

Residents described feelings of confinement, of anxiety about when the smoke would end, and of helplessness at not being able to protect their families.¹⁰

Those with young children or elderly relatives reported a particular burden of vigilance, constantly checking air quality apps, debating whether to keep children inside for another day, and managing the secondary stress of children unable to play outdoors for weeks at a time.

Mental health researchers have begun documenting what is sometimes called "eco-grief" or "climate anxiety", the sustained psychological distress that comes not only from acute disaster events but from anticipatory dread of a future understood to be more volatile than the past.

In a city where outdoor life, cycling to work, bush walking, visiting the lake shores, is central to many residents' sense of place and wellbeing, the loss of safe outdoor time to smoke or extreme heat represents a form of dispossession that is difficult to quantify but easy to feel.

For those without access to air conditioning at home, heatwaves are not a matter of inconvenience but of physical danger.

Australian public health research has found strong evidence of increasing hospitalisation risk during extreme heat for people with mental and behavioural disorders, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and respiratory disease.¹¹

People experiencing homelessness are acutely exposed: without shelter that can be sealed against smoke, without air conditioning, and often without access to the information channels through which official warnings travel.

The ACT has Australia's highest rate of persistent homelessness, with 45 per cent of people who become homeless remaining so for at least seven months.¹²

Climate shocks that strain housing access, through storm damage, rent increases driven by reconstruction demand, or the loss of income from missed work, can push people into or deeper into housing insecurity, with cascading effects on mental health, family stability and community cohesion.

Housing, Neighbourhoods and Public Spaces

The capacity of a home to protect its occupants from heat and smoke is not a natural given, it is the product of decisions made during design and construction, decisions that in Canberra's rental market fall to landlords who bear none of the health costs of poorly insulated or ineffectively ventilated properties.

University of Canberra researchers found that the quality of homes protecting residents during extended heatwaves was one of the key weaknesses in Canberra's climate resilience profile.¹

The ACT Greens have identified outer suburbs as being most at risk as temperatures rise, specifically citing West Belconnen, lower Woden, outer Gungahlin and large parts of Tuggeranong as areas with less established tree cover and correspondingly greater heat exposure.³

These are also, in many cases, the suburbs with the highest proportions of public and social housing, lower-income households and newer, denser development.

The urban heat island effect, whereby built surfaces absorb and re-radiate heat, raising local temperatures above rural surroundings, is more pronounced in areas with extensive asphalt, minimal vegetation and poor air circulation.

The ACT Government's Living Infrastructure Plan sets a target of 30 per cent tree canopy cover in urban areas by 2045, but progress is uneven across the city and the decades-long lag between planting and canopy maturity means that today's new residents in outer suburbs will wait years before they experience meaningful shade.¹³

Public spaces that Canberrans have long regarded as central to the city's character, the foreshore of Lake Burley Griffin, the network of cycle paths, the bush reserves at the urban fringe, are becoming less reliably accessible.

Smoke warnings restrict outdoor recreation across all socioeconomic groups, but those who can work from home, take their children to air-conditioned private play spaces or escape to climate-controlled gyms are insulated from the social costs in ways that shift workers, early childhood educators and outdoor hospitality workers are not.

There is also emerging evidence, consistent with international patterns, that climate pressures contribute to population movement, with some residents, particularly those with the means to do so, beginning to think about whether Canberra's climate trajectory is compatible with the life they want to live.

The communities most likely to leave are those most able to: professional, mobile households with portable work and financial savings.

Those who remain, in cheaper suburbs, in social housing, in long-established community networks, will inherit a city whose climate is changing and whose financial and social resources for adaptation are unequally spread.

Meanwhile, energy bills are rising as air conditioning shifts from a luxury to a medical necessity, and climate-driven insurance pressures are beginning to affect affordability across the ACT, particularly in bushfire-prone areas at the urban fringe.¹⁴

Community Cohesion, Culture and Identity

Disaster has a paradoxical social quality: it can both fracture communities and draw them together.

In the immediate aftermath of the 2019–20 fires and smoke, many Canberrans described a sharp intensification of neighbourly attention, checking on elderly neighbours, sharing information about air quality, organising informal support for those who could not easily manage alone.

The University of Canberra research noted, however, that access to strong social networks, among the most important resources for climate resilience, was lower in Canberra than access to financial resources, meaning that a significant number of residents did not have people they could reliably call on during a crisis.¹

Canberra's identity as the "bush capital" is not merely a marketing phrase but a genuine cultural attachment, to walking trails, to birdlife, to the particular quality of a spring morning in a city ringed by eucalypts and mountain ranges.

When those mornings are replaced by smoke-haze and fire danger ratings, and when the Floriade flower festival must reckon with changed growing seasons and the Canberra Marathon must consider heat thresholds for participant safety, the social fabric of the city is quietly but materially altered.

The role of First Nations peoples and communities in shaping how Canberra understands its changing landscape is both urgent and undervalued.

Ngunnawal Country, on which Canberra sits, carries thousands of years of accumulated knowledge about seasonal change, fire regimes and landscape management.

Cultural burning practices, rooted in Ngunnawal and Ngambri knowledge, offer approaches to land management that differ substantively from the hazard reduction regimes currently employed, and there is growing recognition among researchers and some policymakers that this knowledge deserves a central place in adaptation planning.

Community groups, neighbourhood associations and faith organisations played significant roles during the smoke emergency, running welfare checks, distributing masks and providing informal gathering points where people could share information and support.

These networks are resilience infrastructure, but they are largely invisible to formal policy and receive little sustained investment.

Work, Economy and Social Services

Canberra's economy is dominated by the public service, which confers a degree of insulation from climate disruption that is not shared across the workforce.

Public servants can often work from home on smoke days or heatwaves, receive paid sick leave and are not penalised for weather-related absence.

Outdoor workers, construction labourers, landscapers, delivery riders, street-based vendors and market stall operators, have no such buffer.

Under workplace health and safety law, there are established thresholds for heat risk, but enforcement is inconsistent, and workers in casual or gig-economy arrangements frequently face informal pressure to work regardless of conditions.

The ACT Government's own climate modelling projects that with a 3°C temperature increase, Canberra could see up to 40 days per year above 35°C, and up to 10 days per year above 44°C.⁵

For industries whose viability depends on outdoor conditions, event management, tourism, the arts sector, agriculture at the ACT's rural fringe, this is not a marginal disruption but a fundamental threat to business models.

Community and social services are already experiencing climate-linked demand pressures.

Emergency relief organisations, mental health services, housing support agencies and disability service providers all described expanded caseloads during the 2019–20 emergency, and the anticipation of more frequent and more severe events has prompted some organisations to build climate response into their operational planning.

But social services in the ACT, as elsewhere, are chronically under-resourced relative to need, and the additional burden of climate-driven demand risks compromising the provision of baseline services for the most vulnerable.

The question of who pays for resilience, and who is expected to manufacture it from their own thin resources, is a political question that ACT climate policy has not yet adequately confronted.

Governance, Trust and Participation

The ACT Government has pursued a comparatively ambitious climate mitigation agenda, with commitments including net zero emissions by 2045 and 100 per cent renewable electricity, already achieved.⁶

On adaptation, the question of how the territory prepares its society for the impacts of warming that is already locked in, the record is more mixed.

The ACT Climate Change Strategy 2019–25 recognised climate resilience as a social as well as environmental challenge, and funded the University of Canberra resilience research, but critics, including ACTCOSS, have argued that policy implementation still tends to treat climate as primarily a technical or infrastructure issue rather than as a social justice one.

Emergency warnings during the 2019–20 fires and smoke events were broadcast through official social media channels and ACT Health advisories, channels that are less reliably accessed by older residents, people from non-English-speaking backgrounds, people with limited digital access and people who are not formally housed.

The differential capacity to receive, interpret and act on emergency information is itself a social inequality, with direct consequences for who survives climate shocks and who does not.

Canberrans who participated in the Salvation Army's 2025 ACT Social Justice Stocktake described a strong sense of urgency about climate change, alongside a frustration that political processes were too slow and insufficiently attentive to those bearing the greatest costs.¹⁵

One respondent, identified only by suburb, offered a statement that is difficult to improve upon: "I want someone in government to care."

Looking Ahead: What a Just Adaptation Might Look Like

The social consequences of climate change in Canberra by 2040 will be shaped less by the physics of the atmosphere than by the political choices made in the intervening years.

A Canberra in which adaptation investment is concentrated on infrastructure while social housing remains inadequate, renters remain unable to retrofit their homes and outer suburbs continue to bake without tree cover will be a city in which the costs of climate change are borne overwhelmingly by those who are already disadvantaged.

But climate adaptation, undertaken with genuine commitment to equity, is also an opportunity.

Retrofitting Canberra's housing stock, beginning with social and community housing, for energy efficiency and thermal comfort would simultaneously reduce emissions, lower energy bills for low-income households and protect lives during heatwaves.

Expanding tree canopy in outer suburbs would reduce heat exposure, improve mental health and increase the liveability of communities that have long received less green infrastructure than older, more affluent neighbourhoods.

Investing in community social networks, not merely as a feel-good supplement to formal services but as recognised resilience infrastructure, would strengthen the connective tissue that matters most when services are stretched and emergencies unfold.

Centring First Nations knowledge and leadership in land management and adaptation planning would not only improve environmental outcomes but would represent a form of structural respect long overdue.

And creating meaningful, accessible pathways for participation in climate adaptation decisions, ones that reach beyond the already-engaged and already-comfortable, would begin to close the gap between who bears the costs of climate change and who shapes the response.

The stories of climate change in Canberra that are not yet being told are the stories of the woman in a poorly insulated Tuggeranong flat who cannot afford to run her air conditioner, the construction worker who loses three days' pay during a heatwave shutdown, the Ngunnawal elder watching Country change in ways that no weather model captures, and the young family in Gungahlin watching their children's asthma worsen each summer.

Listening to those stories is not merely an act of compassion, it is the precondition for a climate policy that is capable of protecting everyone.

Canberra has the resources, the institutional capacity and the political culture to do better.

Whether it will is the central social question of the next decade.

References

1. Living Well in a Changing Climate University of Canberra Research Impact, 2025
2. Bushfires in the ACT ACT State of the Environment Report, 2023
3. Outer Canberra Most Unprepared for Climate Disaster ACT Greens Media Release, September 2025
4. Housing and Homelessness ACT Council of Social Service (ACTCOSS)
5. Developing the Next ACT Climate Change Strategy ACT Government, YourSay Conversations 2025
6. Climate Change in the ACT Region NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water
7. Living Well in a Changing Climate: Oxford Economics Global Cities Report 2024 University of Canberra, 2025
8. Missing Middle Canberra: Housing Reform Coalition Missing Middle Canberra
9. Poverty and Inequality in the ACT ACTCOSS Factsheet, October 2022
10. Bushfire Smoke in Our Eyes: Community Perceptions and Responses to an Intense Smoke Event in Canberra, Australia Frontiers in Public Health, January 2022
11. Impact of Extreme Heat on Health in Australia: A Scoping Review BMC Public Health, February 2025
12. Housing as a Right Independents for Canberra
13. Canberra's Living Infrastructure Plan: Cooling the City AdaptNSW ACT Region
14. Australian Capital Territory Social Justice Stocktake 2025 The Salvation Army, 2025
15. Australian Capital Territory Social Justice Stocktake 2025: Community Voices The Salvation Army, 2025

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The Heat and the Politics: How Climate Change Is Reshaping the ACT's Future - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Key Points

The ACT is on track to miss its 2025 interim emissions target, raising serious questions about the path to net zero by 2045. 1 After the 2024 election, Labor and the Greens opted for a confidence-and-supply arrangement rather than a formal coalition, shifting the political dynamics on climate. 2 Transport now accounts for roughly sixty per cent of ACT emissions, making it the hardest and most politically contested sector to decarbonise. 3 Outer Canberra suburbs face the greatest heat risk, with projections of up to forty extreme-heat days per year under higher warming scenarios. 4 The ACT Government is consulting on a new Climate Change Strategy for 2026–35 as the existing plan expires, with community consultation open until March 2026. 5 The ACT's climate ambition consistently exceeds federal settings, creating ongoing friction in energy markets, transport planning and federal funding flows. 6

In the last week of January 2026, Canberra baked.

Temperatures climbed into the high thirties for several consecutive days, and in the outer suburbs of Tuggeranong and West Belconnen — newer developments with fewer established trees — residents described pavements hot enough to burn bare feet and parks stripped of shade.

The heat was not only physical.

It settled over a city whose political class was simultaneously asking the hardest question any small government can face: how do you keep leading on climate change when you are falling behind?

A Nation-Leading Record Under Pressure

The Australian Capital Territory has, by most measures, been the most ambitious jurisdiction in the country on climate action since the Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act was passed in 2010.

The Territory hit 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2020, achieved through a pioneering reverse-auction system for large-scale solar and wind contracts that drove down costs.⁷

Its legislated target — net zero emissions by 2045, five years ahead of many comparable jurisdictions — was described by former Greens minister Shane Rattenbury, who held the climate portfolio for a decade, as proof of what is possible when governments "get on with it."

But the ACT's own Greenhouse Gas Inventory for 2024–25 recorded that total net emissions had declined by approximately 46.9 per cent from the 1989–90 baseline.¹

The 2025 interim target required a reduction of between 50 and 60 per cent.

In October 2025, Environment Minister Suzanne Orr confirmed what had been privately acknowledged for some time: the Territory would miss the 2025 milestone.

"When I took on this portfolio, I was advised there was a risk we would not reach our 2025 greenhouse gas reduction target," Orr said in a statement, noting that on the current trajectory net zero by 2045 was also at risk.⁶

The easy gains — renewable electricity, electric government vehicles, fuel-efficient building standards for new homes — have largely been made.

What remains is harder: transport, gas heating in apartments and older homes, and the behavioural changes that no government anywhere has found easy to legislate.

The Tripartisan Consensus — and Its Cracks

One of the most unusual features of ACT politics is its broad cross-party acceptance of climate science and the long-term net zero goal.

Unlike the federal parliament, where climate policy has been a fault line for two decades, the ACT's three main parties — Labor, the Greens and the Canberra Liberals — all publicly accept the science and endorse the 2045 target.

That agreement, however, masks significant differences in urgency, method and tolerance for community disruption.

The fault lines emerge not on targets but on timelines, technologies and the social costs of transition — precisely the questions that grow harder as the easy wins are exhausted.

The Conservation Council ACT's executive director, Dr Simon Copland, argued in late 2025 that the 2045 net zero target should be brought forward to 2040 and that the government risked becoming "complacent" after its renewable electricity success.¹

Orr, by contrast, said she was "hesitant towards bans" that could generate public backlash, favouring "more carrot than stick" — a framing that the Greens on the crossbench view as insufficient given the gap between stated ambition and measurable progress.

The Canberra Liberals, meanwhile, have accepted the targets in principle while consistently questioning the pace and cost of electrification mandates.

Rattenbury observed in post-2024-election discussions with the Liberal Party that "a lot of their issues with the Greens on climate issues was the way the Greens talked about them" — suggesting that the gap is often as much about political culture and rhetoric as it is about substance.

After the Coalition: A New Power Dynamic

The 2024 ACT election produced a result that changed the structural underpinning of climate policy in the Assembly.

Labor retained 10 seats, the Greens fell to 4, and for the first time since 2012 the two parties chose not to enter a formal coalition.²

Instead, a confidence-and-supply agreement gave the Greens support for the Barr government without ministerial positions or the formal policy commitments that portfolio responsibilities can enforce.

Rattenbury was explicit about why negotiations failed: "On climate, we know that transport is responsible for sixty per cent of our emissions, but Labor was not willing to accelerate building light rail or invest properly in active travel."³

The consequence is that Greens pressure on climate now operates through the crossbench rather than from inside cabinet — a position that increases scrutiny but reduces direct influence over Budget allocations and policy design.

The 2025–26 ACT Budget allocated $238 million for environment, sustainable development and climate initiatives — $9 million more than the previous year — but critics argue this figure masks an absence of the structural policy commitments needed to close the gap between current trajectories and 2030 interim targets.⁶

Rattenbury warned that "Labor went to the election with next to no climate policy, and nothing has seemingly improved since then" — a charge the government contests, pointing to its Big Canberra Battery project and continued investment in electric vehicle infrastructure.

Who Bears the Cost? Equity and Electrification

One of the sharpest political debates inside the Assembly concerns who absorbs the costs of transition.

Electrification — replacing gas heating, hot water systems and cooking appliances with electric alternatives — is technically straightforward but financially uneven: owners of newer, well-insulated homes benefit most, while renters in older properties often carry the burden of higher energy bills and are unable to retrofit without landlord approval.

The Greens' 2024 election platform proposed fully funding gas-to-electric upgrades for 5,000 of the lowest-income households, alongside a ban on all new gas appliances from 2027 onwards.⁸

Labor has committed to phasing out new fossil-fuel-powered cars by 2035 but has been more cautious on gas-appliance bans, reflecting a calculation that coercive measures risk alienating the middle ground of the electorate.

The Assembly's own climate legislation commits to a transition that is "fair, equitable, socially just and economically viable" — a phrase that all parties invoke and that none defines in detail when pressed on implementation.

There is also a genuine question about whether climate policy functions, in the ACT context, as an economic development agenda or as primarily an environmental obligation.

The Greens proposed an "Electrify Canberra Skills Hub" at the Canberra Institute of Technology to train workers for the transition economy — an acknowledgement that jobs, skills and industrial development are inseparable from the decarbonisation task.

The Heat Is Here: Adaptation and the Urban Body

Canberra's continental climate — hot, dry summers and cold winters — is shifting in ways that planners are only beginning to absorb.

Local projections suggest that under higher warming scenarios, Canberrans may face up to 40 days per year above 35 degrees Celsius, and heatwaves of 44 degrees could occur as frequently as ten times a year by mid-century.⁴

These projections are not uniformly distributed across the city.

Greens climate adaptation spokesperson Andrew Braddock MLA identified outer suburbs — West Belconnen, lower Woden, outer Gungahlin and large parts of Tuggeranong — as the most exposed, because they were developed more recently, have fewer established trees and rely more heavily on car travel.

"Canberrans in outer suburbs are stepping out to pavements they could fry an egg on," Braddock said during the January 2026 heatwave.

The ACT Government's Living Infrastructure Plan targets 30 per cent tree canopy cover across Canberra's urban footprint by 2045, alongside 30 per cent permeable surfaces — targets embedded in the 2023 Urban Forest Act and the Territory Plan.⁹

But canopy targets create their own political tensions: higher-density development — which the Assembly also supports to ease housing costs — often requires removing existing trees or reducing the land available for new planting.

The Greens' pre-election proposal for a Chief Heat Officer — a dedicated bureaucratic role to coordinate responses to extreme heat events — was welcomed by some independent crossbenchers but questioned by others as an expensive institutional layer that would duplicate existing emergency services coordination.

The political argument for such a role rests on a straightforward observation: heat adaptation requires cross-directorate decision-making — on urban planning, public health, parks, emergency services and social services — that no single existing agency is equipped to coordinate.

Community, Consultation and Democratic Accountability

In January 2026, the ACT Government opened public consultation on its next Climate Change Strategy, a framework intended to guide action from 2026 to 2035.⁵

The process — which runs until 18 March 2026 — is the Territory's most significant public engagement on climate in a decade, and it arrives at a moment of genuine uncertainty about whether the existing policy architecture is fit for the harder phase of decarbonisation.

A tension that the consultation is unlikely to resolve is whether tripartisan consensus on long-term targets dulls rather than sharpens democratic debate.

When all parties agree on the destination, the scrutiny shifts to implementation — and implementation is where the Assembly has been weakest.

Tree-planting targets have been missed, the 2025 interim emissions target will not be met, and the transition away from gas — which the previous Labor-Greens government committed to — remains incomplete.

The absence of a formal independent accountability mechanism — something akin to the UK's Climate Change Committee, which is required by statute to report to parliament and whose advice the government must formally respond to — is a gap that the Greens and some community organisations have urged the Assembly to close.

The ACT Climate Change Council provides expert advice, and the Territory funds it, but ministers are not compelled to publish detailed responses to its recommendations or explain publicly when they diverge from its guidance.

Caught Between Canberra and the Commonwealth

The ACT's climate ambition has consistently exceeded federal settings, and that mismatch generates political friction in areas the Territory cannot fully control.

Energy market rules are set at the national level; the ACT's decision to source 100 per cent of its electricity from renewables does not insulate Canberra households from wholesale price volatility driven by interstate generators.

Transport is the most acute tension: the ACT cannot set emission standards for new vehicles sold nationally, which limits the pace at which its fleet turns over to electric models — even with territory-specific rebates and registration incentives in place.

The ACT Liberal Party occupies an unusual position: broadly supporting the Territory's climate targets while sharing a federal party brand with a Liberal–National Coalition that, as recently as 2025, equivocated on medium-term national emissions targets and threatened the independence of the Climate Change Authority.¹⁰

Assembly members navigate this by treating territory and federal politics as distinct arenas — a position that works as a practical accommodation but leaves voters uncertain about how a Liberal-led ACT government would approach federal-territory negotiations on climate funding and standards.

Conclusion: A City That Cannot Afford to Stop

Canberra's economy is, in essential respects, a government economy.

The Australian Public Service, defence, universities and the diplomatic sector dominate the labour market and give the city a stability that protects it from many of the dislocation risks that haunt regional economies as fossil fuels are phased out.

But that insulation is partial.

A city that is increasingly hot — with summers that test the limits of outdoor activity, bushfire smoke that periodically blankets the valley and extreme weather events that strain emergency services — is a city whose liveability proposition is under threat.

The gap between the ACT's stated ambition and its measurable progress is a political problem now, but it will become an economic one if the infrastructure of adaptation — the trees, the public cooling spaces, the resilient housing stock, the electrified transport network — falls further behind the pace of warming.

Minister Orr's preference for carrots over sticks and Rattenbury's insistence that Labor must match rhetoric with resources both point to the same underlying truth: the next decade of climate politics in the ACT will be decided not by which party commits to the right target but by which government summons the political courage to act on it.

The community consultation open until March 2026 will reveal whether Canberrans are willing to accept more direct asks on transport, gas and land use — or whether the tripartisan consensus on net zero by 2045 remains, as critics fear, a comfortable agreement to argue about the future rather than change the present.

Canberra has led before.

The question is whether it can lead again, in the harder terrain that lies ahead.

References

1. ACT Greenhouse Gas Inventory 2024–25, ACT Government (accessed February 2026)
2. 2024 Australian Capital Territory election, Wikipedia (accessed February 2026)
3. ACT Greens launch four-year plan — media release, ACT Greens, November 2024
4. Outer Canberra Most Unprepared for Climate Disaster — ACT Greens media release, September 2025
5. Developing the next ACT Climate Change Strategy 2026–35, YourSay ACT (consultation open January–March 2026)
6. Next steps on emissions reduction and climate adaptation — Chief Minister's Directorate media release, 2025
7. ACT's Climate Strategy to a Net Zero Emissions Territory, YourSay ACT
8. Climate policies — ACT Greens, 2024 election platform
9. Canberra's Living Infrastructure Plan, ACT Government Climate Choices
10. Election Policy Scorecard 2025, Climate Council of Australia

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Climate Change and the Ecological Future of Canberra and the ACT - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Key Points

Woodlands and grasslands face heat stress and dieback 1 Fire regimes intensify ecological disruption 2 Waterways show declining flows and rising temperatures 3 Urban heat threatens living infrastructure 4 Soils degrade under drought and intense rainfall 5 Cascading impacts reshape ecosystems and communities 6

Canberra was once described as a city in a landscape.

That landscape is now warming, drying and burning in ways that scientists warned about decades ago.

The ACT has warmed by around 1.4 degrees Celsius since 1910, with more very hot days and longer heatwaves recorded in recent decades.¹

Rainfall has become more variable, with declines in cool season rainfall in south eastern Australia contributing to reduced runoff into rivers and storages.²

These climatic shifts are reshaping ecosystems across the territory, from endangered grasslands to alpine bogs.

Terrestrial ecosystems and biodiversity

Box gum grassy woodlands and natural temperate grasslands are among the most threatened ecosystems in south eastern Australia.

Both communities are listed as critically endangered under national law due to historic clearing and fragmentation.³

Climate change adds a new layer of stress by increasing heat extremes and soil moisture deficits.

Researchers have documented increased tree dieback in parts of Canberra’s urban forest following prolonged drought and heat, particularly affecting species such as yellow box and Blakely’s red gum.⁴

Urban foresters report canopy thinning and higher mortality among exotic deciduous species that were planted for a cooler twentieth century climate.

Hotter and drier conditions reduce flowering and seed set in grasses and forbs, which diminishes food resources for insects and seed eating birds.

Ecologists in the ACT have observed shifts in bird assemblages after drought years, with declines in woodland dependent species and increases in more generalist birds.

Some reptile species appear to be shifting activity patterns to avoid extreme heat, which can alter predator and prey dynamics.

Vegetation stress also creates opportunities for invasive plants such as African lovegrass to expand into disturbed grasslands.

Climate driven stress interacts with grazing pressure and invasive animals, compounding habitat degradation.

Fire regimes and post fire recovery

The Black Summer fires of 2019 to 2020 burnt almost 90 per cent of Namadgi National Park.

That season was preceded by record low rainfall and high temperatures across the region.⁵

Climate change increases the frequency of extreme fire weather in south eastern Australia.⁶

In Namadgi, some alpine ash stands experienced high severity fire that killed mature trees and triggered concerns about regeneration under a warmer climate.

Repeated or more intense fires can shorten the interval between burns below the time needed for obligate seeding plants to reach maturity.

After severe fires, heavy rainfall events have caused erosion on steep slopes, transporting ash and nutrients into waterways.

Land managers balance hazard reduction burns with biodiversity protection, yet windows for safe burning are narrowing as fire seasons lengthen.

Ecologists warn that if warming continues, some vegetation communities may shift to new states that differ markedly from those recorded in the past century.

Water resources, rivers and lakes

Reduced cool season rainfall has lowered inflows into Canberra’s storages during drought periods.

The Millennium Drought demonstrated how quickly storage levels can fall under sustained rainfall deficits.⁷

Higher air temperatures increase evaporation from soils and water bodies, further reducing effective runoff.

In the Murrumbidgee River and urban creeks, lower flows and higher water temperatures stress native fish and macroinvertebrates.

Warmer water holds less dissolved oxygen, which can impair aquatic life.

Cyanobacterial blooms have occurred repeatedly in Lake Burley Griffin during warm months, reflecting nutrient inputs and elevated temperatures.⁸

More intense storms following dry periods can wash sediments and nutrients into waterways, degrading water quality.

Climate projections for the ACT indicate further reductions in average runoff under higher global warming scenarios, with greater declines at 2 and 3 degrees compared with 1.5 degrees.²

Urban ecology, heat and living infrastructure

Canberra’s identity as a garden city depends on its tree canopy.

Urban heat island effects intensify during heatwaves, placing additional stress on street trees.

Studies across Australian cities show that extreme heat events increase tree mortality and reduce growth rates, especially where soil moisture is limited.⁹

The ACT Government has set targets of 30 per cent canopy cover and 30 per cent permeable surfaces by 2045 to improve resilience.

Whether these targets can offset projected warming depends on species selection, irrigation and protection of mature trees.

Community groups report fewer pollinators during prolonged dry spells, which affects urban biodiversity and home gardens.

Loss of canopy also reduces shading and cooling, feeding back into higher local temperatures.

Soil health and land degradation

Drought reduces soil moisture and microbial activity, which are essential for nutrient cycling.

Heatwaves can cause surface crusting that limits water infiltration.

When intense rainfall follows drought, bare soils are vulnerable to erosion.

After the 2020 fires, storm events mobilised sediments into rivers and reservoirs, highlighting the link between fire and erosion.

Projected increases in rainfall intensity raise the risk of gully erosion on rural lands in the ACT region.²

Compounding and cascading impacts

Drought weakens vegetation, which increases fire risk.

Fire removes ground cover, which amplifies erosion during subsequent storms.

Dust and smoke reduce air quality, affecting human health and outdoor activity.

These cascading impacts demonstrate that climate events do not occur in isolation.

If warming and drying trends continue over the next two to three decades, risks include further biodiversity loss, altered water security and degraded urban amenity.

Climate impacts on ecosystems feed back into human systems through smoke pollution, reduced recreational water quality and loss of cultural landscapes.

Adaptation, monitoring and governance

The ACT monitors ecological indicators including vegetation condition, water quality and species populations through State of the Environment reporting.¹⁰

Recent reports identify climate change as a key driver of declining ecological condition.

Conservation strategies increasingly incorporate climate projections and connectivity planning to allow species movement.

Adaptation actions include restoring riparian vegetation, diversifying urban tree species and protecting climate refugia in reserves.

Scientists, Ngunnawal custodians and community volunteers contribute local knowledge to monitoring and land management programs.

Socio ecological and justice dimensions

Access to green space supports physical and mental wellbeing.

Communities in hotter suburbs with lower canopy cover may experience greater heat exposure.

Rural landholders face economic and ecological pressures as drought and fire reshape landscapes.

Decisions about which landscapes to prioritise for protection reflect social values as well as ecological science.

Conclusion

Canberra’s ecology stands at a crossroads shaped by global forces and local choices.

The evidence shows that warming and drying trends are already altering woodlands, waterways and urban green spaces.

These changes interact with legacy pressures such as fragmentation and invasive species.

Policy targets for canopy cover, water management and biodiversity conservation offer pathways to adaptation, yet their success depends on sustained investment and rigorous monitoring.

If global warming is limited closer to 1.5 degrees rather than 3 degrees, projected declines in runoff, fire weather and heat extremes are likely to be less severe.²

The future of the ACT’s ecosystems will therefore depend both on local stewardship and on broader efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The city in a landscape can endure, but only if climate risk is treated as a central organising principle of planning and conservation.

References

1. CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology, Climate Change in Australia projections
2. IPCC Sixth Assessment Report Working Group I
3. Australian Government, Box Gum Grassy Woodlands
4. ACT State of the Environment Report
5. Bureau of Meteorology Annual Climate Statement 2019
6. IPCC Sixth Assessment Report Working Group II
7. Bureau of Meteorology, The Millennium Drought
8. ACT Government, Lake Burley Griffin Water Quality
9. CSIRO Urban Heat Research
10. Australia State of the Environment Report

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The Climate Balance Sheet: How a Warming World Is Reshaping Canberra’s Economy - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Key Points

Climate change will reshape ACT output, productivity and sector balance over coming decades [1] Public service, construction, tourism and health face rising physical and transition risks [4] Infrastructure, housing and insurance costs are already climbing after fires and hailstorms [6] Extreme heat and smoke reduce productivity and deepen inequality [2] Water security and regional supply chains expose Canberra to broader NSW climate shocks [3] Early adaptation and clean energy investment could generate jobs and fiscal stability [5]

On smoke filled mornings in January 2020, Canberra looked less like a knowledge capital and more like a city under siege.

For weeks, hazardous air blanketed the national capital, schools closed and construction sites fell silent.

The images were dramatic, yet the economic story unfolding beneath them was quieter and more enduring.

Big picture and macroeconomic impacts

Climate modelling for south eastern Australia projects more frequent extreme heat, reduced cool season rainfall and longer fire seasons over coming decades.^[1]

Heat reduces labour productivity, particularly in outdoor and non air conditioned settings, and the Productivity Commission has warned that climate impacts will weigh on national output if adaptation lags.^[2]

For the ACT, whose economy is dominated by public administration, professional services, education and health, the effect is less about lost mines or farms and more about disrupted services and rising costs.

The ACT Treasury assumes steady population growth, stable public sector employment and moderate productivity gains in its forward estimates.

Those projections embed historical weather patterns that no longer reflect a warming climate.

Physical risks such as fires, hailstorms and flash floods sit alongside chronic stresses like extreme heat and transition risks from decarbonisation policies.

The public service is exposed through continuity of operations and asset management.

Construction faces downtime during heatwaves and storms.

Tourism and events depend on clear skies and predictable summers.

Health services absorb the costs when heat and smoke drive hospital admissions.

Each shock compounds cost of living pressures already amplified by insurance and energy price volatility.

Sector specific and local business impacts

The 2019 to 2020 Black Summer bushfires exposed Canberra to some of the worst air quality in the world.^[4]

Retail turnover fell during peak smoke periods as residents stayed indoors and tourism bookings collapsed.

In February 2020, a severe hailstorm damaged more than 20,000 vehicles and thousands of buildings, generating insurance claims exceeding $1 billion nationally.^[6]

Local trades experienced a surge in repair work, yet small businesses without adequate insurance faced crippling losses.

Universities have since incorporated climate risk into campus planning, upgrading cooling systems and reviewing emergency protocols.

Hospitals have expanded heatwave response plans as evidence links extreme heat to increased admissions and mortality.^[7]

Large federal agencies now assess climate resilience in procurement and building design.

Small and medium enterprises often lack similar analytical capacity.

Industry groups report demand for clearer guidance on climate risk disclosure and insurance options.

Infrastructure, housing, insurance and finance

Critical infrastructure across the ACT, from roads to digital networks, was built for a cooler climate.

Extreme heat softens road surfaces and strains electricity networks during peak demand.

Water security remains a central concern in the Murray Darling Basin, where inflows are projected to decline under high emissions scenarios.^[3]

Reduced inflows can translate into higher water prices for households and businesses.

Insurance premiums in disaster prone regions of Australia have risen sharply in recent years as insurers reprice climate risk.^[8]

While Canberra is not coastal, bushfire and hail exposure affect premiums and mortgage affordability.

If parts of the ACT were deemed high risk, reduced insurance availability could depress property values and deter investment.

The ACT Government has begun integrating climate considerations into asset management and green bond issuance.

Labour market, productivity, and inequality

Higher average temperatures increase the number of days above 35 degrees in Canberra, affecting outdoor workers in construction, landscaping and emergency services.^[1]

Heat stress reduces cognitive performance and raises workplace injury risk.

Casual hospitality staff lose shifts when smoke deters visitors.

Low income renters in poorly insulated housing face higher cooling costs and health risks.

Climate shocks therefore deepen inequality, as those with fewer resources struggle to adapt.

There is limited evidence so far of net migration driven by climate risk into or out of Canberra.

However, relative climate stability compared with coastal flood zones could influence future population flows.

Preparing the workforce for electrification, renewable energy maintenance and climate risk analysis will require targeted training and vocational programs.

Public finances, health, and social services

Disaster recovery and infrastructure repair have placed pressure on ACT and federal budgets.

Heatwaves increase demand for ambulance callouts and hospital care, generating direct fiscal costs and lost work days.^[7]

The ACT Budget acknowledges climate risk but long term fiscal projections remain sensitive to assumptions about disaster frequency.

Community organisations report spikes in demand after extreme events, particularly for housing assistance and mental health support.

Smoke exposure has been associated with respiratory and cardiovascular impacts, with measurable economic costs through absenteeism and treatment.^[7]

Water, land, and regional interdependence

Canberra relies on water catchments and transport corridors that extend into New South Wales.

Climate impacts on regional agriculture affect food prices in the ACT.

Disruptions to highways or energy infrastructure reverberate through Canberra’s service economy.

Urban tree canopy mitigates heat island effects, yet prolonged drought and heat stress threaten tree health and liveability.

Investment in urban greening and environmental restoration can reduce cooling costs and support local employment.

Transition risks, policy, and investment

The ACT has committed to net zero emissions by 2045 and sources 100 per cent of its electricity from renewable contracts.^[5]

This positions Canberra favourably in a decarbonising economy, yet transition risks remain.

Federal policy shifts, carbon pricing mechanisms or border adjustments could affect defence contractors and service exporters based in the ACT.

Investors increasingly apply climate disclosure standards aligned with national reporting frameworks.^[9]

Projects that fail to demonstrate resilience may struggle to secure finance.

Community resilience and long term planning

Early adaptation investments, such as cooling infrastructure and fire resilient urban design, can reduce long term costs.

Land use planning now incorporates bushfire risk mapping and building standards designed for higher temperatures.

Some outer suburbs near grassland and forest interfaces face disproportionate fire exposure.

Designing adaptation projects to create apprenticeships and local supply chains can diversify the ACT economy.

A climate resilient ACT economy in 2050 would combine low emissions energy, heat adapted infrastructure and a workforce skilled in environmental management.

Conclusion

Canberra’s economy has long appeared insulated from the commodity cycles that buffet other Australian regions.

Yet climate change reveals a different vulnerability, one tied to heat, smoke, water and fiscal exposure.

The costs are already visible in insurance premiums, hospital admissions and disrupted business activity.

Over the next three decades, the ACT’s prosperity will depend less on avoiding climate impacts than on managing them intelligently.

Transparent budgeting, resilient infrastructure and investment in skills for electrification and environmental restoration can cushion economic shocks.

Delay, by contrast, will compound losses and widen inequality.

For a city built on planning and policy, the challenge is to align economic forecasts with a warming reality and act before the next smoke filled summer writes its own balance sheet.

References

1. Climate Change in Australia Projections
2. Productivity Commission, Climate Change Adaptation Inquiry
3. Murray Darling Basin Authority, Climate Change and Water Availability
4. Australian Government, Health Impacts of 2019–20 Bushfire Smoke
5. ACT Climate Change Strategy
6. Insurance Council of Australia, Canberra Hailstorm Report
7. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Heatwaves and Health
8. APRA Climate Vulnerability Assessment
9. Australian Treasury, Climate-related Financial Disclosure

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Smoke in the Garden City: How Climate Change Is Reshaping Canberra’s Cultural Landscape - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Key Points

Extreme heat, smoke and storms disrupt Canberra’s seasonal rhythms [1] Black Summer exposed infrastructure and health vulnerabilities [2] Climate change threatens Ngunnawal connections to Country [3] Urban forest target seeks 30 percent canopy by 2045 [4] Energy poverty deepens cultural and social divides [5] National institutions frame climate as cultural history [6]

On certain summer mornings, Canberra wakes not to birdsong but to the metallic haze of bushfire smoke drifting across Lake Burley Griffin.

The city was imagined as a “city in the landscape”, a capital woven into bushland and open sky.

That landscape is changing faster than its founders could have imagined.

Transformation of Seasonal Traditions

Canberra’s social calendar once pivoted around crisp autumn festivals, dry summer evenings and frost-bitten winter mornings.

In recent years, those rhythms have become less predictable.

The 2019 to 2020 Black Summer bushfires pushed the Australian Capital Territory into a prolonged state of hazardous air quality, with Canberra recording some of the worst air pollution levels in the world in January 2020 ^[1].

Outdoor events were cancelled or postponed as smoke settled over the city for weeks.

Summer festivals and open air concerts now operate with contingency plans for extreme heat and poor air quality.

The Bureau of Meteorology reports that Canberra’s average temperatures have risen by around 1.5 degrees since 1910, with more days above 35 degrees ^[2].

Heatwaves are lasting longer and nights are staying warmer, limiting relief after sunset.

Residents describe so called tropical nights when temperatures remain above 20 degrees, altering sleep patterns and outdoor social life.

Gardeners speak of earlier flowering and stressed deciduous trees.

Local sporting clubs reschedule matches to avoid peak heat.

The texture of memory is shifting.

Older Canberrans recall dry summer heat tempered by cool evenings.

Younger residents speak of summers defined by smoke alerts and ultraviolet warnings.

During Black Summer, smoke infiltrated buildings across the city, including Canberra Hospital, prompting concerns about indoor air safety and filtration systems .

Cultural institutions closed reading rooms and reduced hours.

The disruption was logistical but also psychological.

Summer ceased to be carefree.

Impact on Indigenous Cultural Heritage

For the Ngunnawal people, the custodians of the Canberra region, climate change is not only meteorological.

It is a disturbance in the relationship between people and Country.

Traditional seasonal knowledge is grounded in close observation of plants, animals and water cycles.

Changes in rainfall patterns and fire regimes affect the availability of bush foods, known as mayi, and the timing of cultural practices ^[3].

Elders have described how hotter conditions alter the growth cycles of native grasses and yams.

When species decline or shift habitat, the transmission of knowledge between generations becomes more difficult.

Fire has long been used as a cultural land management tool.

However, extreme bushfire conditions driven by climate change differ from cool cultural burns.

The Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements found that climate change is increasing the intensity of fire weather across south eastern Australia .

For Indigenous communities, this represents a rupture in established protocols.

Art and storytelling are evolving to reflect landscapes marked by fire and flood.

Climate change becomes part of oral history.

It is framed not only as environmental degradation but as a weakening of reciprocal obligations between humans and Country.

At the same time, Indigenous land management knowledge is increasingly recognised in national policy debates.

Calls for greater incorporation of cultural burning practices highlight resilience as well as loss.

Threats to the “City in the Landscape” Identity

Canberra’s design, influenced by Walter Burley Griffin, integrated suburbs with bushland corridors and an expansive urban forest.

Tree canopy moderates temperature through shade and evapotranspiration, the process by which water evaporates from leaves and cools the air.

The ACT Government has committed to maintaining at least 30 percent tree canopy cover across the city by 2045 to counter the urban heat island effect ^[4].

Urban heat islands occur when built surfaces such as asphalt absorb and re radiate heat.

Suburbs with less canopy experience higher daytime temperatures.

Climate modelling indicates Canberra will face more frequent extreme heat days and increased bushfire risk under high emissions scenarios .

Public spaces are being redesigned with shaded playgrounds, water sensitive urban design and drought resilient plantings.

New developments incorporate higher energy efficiency standards.

Yet adaptation is uneven.

Research by the Australian Council of Social Service shows that low income households are more likely to live in poorly insulated homes and experience energy stress, defined as spending a high proportion of income on power bills ^[5].

Renters often lack control over upgrades such as insulation or solar panels.

As summers intensify, access to cooling becomes a marker of inequality.

The cultural image of outdoor barbecues and lakeside recreation sits uneasily beside the reality of indoor refuge during heatwaves.

Cultural Institutions as Climate Hubs

Canberra’s national institutions are confronting climate change as both subject and condition.

The National Museum of Australia has appointed a Senior Fellow in Culture and Environment to deepen research into how environmental change shapes national identity ^[6].

Exhibitions increasingly situate climate change within longer histories of land use and industrial development.

The Australian National University hosts climate scientists whose research informs federal policy.

Archives and libraries grapple with preserving collections amid rising temperatures and bushfire risk.

Museums and galleries serve as cooling refuges during extreme heat.

They are also forums for public debate.

Artistic responses, from photography of smoke shrouded skylines to installations using charred timber, embed climate change within cultural memory.

In this sense, Canberra is not only a site of policy but of narrative construction.

The capital becomes a lens through which Australians interpret environmental change.

Conclusion

Canberra’s identity as a city in the landscape has always relied on balance.

The balance was aesthetic and ecological.

Climate change unsettles both.

Smoke darkens the lake, heat reshapes daily life and ancient seasonal knowledge strains against altered conditions.

Policy responses, from canopy targets to emissions reductions, signal intent.

Yet adaptation will require more than infrastructure.

It demands cultural recalibration.

If the landscape continues to transform, Canberra must decide whether its identity rests in nostalgia for a cooler past or in stewardship of a hotter future.

The answer will shape not only the skyline but the stories the capital tells about itself.

References

1. Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements Report
2. Bureau of Meteorology Climate Change in Australia
3. AIATSIS: Indigenous Knowledge and Climate Change
4. ACT Government Urban Forest Strategy
5. ACOSS Energy Stress and Climate Impacts
6. National Museum of Australia Senior Fellow in Culture and Environment

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Between Fire and Flood: The Reality of Australia’s 2035 Climate Sprint - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Key Points

Australia recorded its 4th warmest year in 2025, shattering historical expectations for a "cool" phase. 1 The "Heat-Niña" phenomenon has fundamentally redefined the impact of traditional climate cycles. 3 The Great Barrier Reef faces a dual threat from localised bleaching and sediment-heavy flood plumes. 4 The Federal Government has surged its 2035 emissions reduction target to a 62–70% range. 8 Meeting new climate goals requires tripling the current rate of national emissions reductions. 11 AEMO warns two-thirds of coal power must retire by 2035 to maintain grid stability and targets. 12

Australia’s climate baseline has officially shattered after 2025 was confirmed as the nation’s fourth-warmest year on record, despite the cooling influence of a La Niña cycle.

The Bureau of Meteorology’s Annual Climate Statement reveals a continent grappling with a permanent shift in atmospheric behaviour. ^[1]

With national mean temperatures sitting 1.23°C above the 1961–1990 average, the data suggests that even our "cool" years are now significantly hotter than the "hot" years of the previous century. ^[2]

This thermal creep has culminated in the "Heat-Niña" of 2025, a freakish hybrid event that saw the second-warmest summer on record occur during what should have been a dampening weather pattern. ^[3]

Off the coast, the Great Barrier Reef is enduring a perilous "tale of two stresses" as it battles both rising sea temperatures and the toxic aftermath of tropical storms. ^[4]

In response to these compounding crises, the Australian government has dramatically pivoted its policy, committing to a 62–70% emissions reduction target by 2035. ^[8]

This "2035 Sprint" necessitates a radical industrial overhaul, with energy market regulators warning that two-thirds of the coal fleet must vanish within a decade. ^[12]

Economists and scientists alike are now warning that the window for a gradual transition has closed, replaced by a mandatory sprint toward decarbonisation. ^[11]

The reality of a 1.23°C anomaly means that the "normal" we once understood is no longer a viable reference point for policy or survival.

As the nation looks toward a precarious 2026, the fragility of our ecosystems and the urgency of our energy transition have never been more exposed.

2025: The Year the Baseline Broke

For decades, Australian meteorology was defined by the predictable oscillation between El Niño and La Niña, but 2025 has proved that this cycle is no longer a reliable shield against global heating.

The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) confirmed on February 9, 2026, that the national mean temperature for 2025 was 1.23°C above the standard reference period. ^[1]

This figure places 2025 as the fourth-warmest year since records began in 1910, a statistic that becomes even more alarming when the underlying climate drivers are considered.

Typically, a La Niña event facilitates cooler surface temperatures across the Australian continent due to increased cloud cover and rainfall.

However, 2025 defied these historical norms, delivering a "Heat-Niña" that saw persistent heatwaves rolling across the southern states during the height of the wet phase.

The summer of 2024–25 was the second warmest on record for Australia, a fact that has forced climatologists to reconsider the cooling capacity of the Pacific Ocean’s natural cycles. ^[3]

Data indicates that the heat trapped in the upper layers of the ocean is now so substantial that it can override the traditional cooling mechanisms of the atmosphere.

This "broken baseline" means that the floor of our temperature range has been elevated, making moderate heatwaves more frequent and extreme heatwaves more deadly.

Regional data from the BOM highlights that parts of Western Australia and the Northern Territory experienced temperatures consistently 2°C above average for the majority of the year.

The persistence of these anomalies suggests that the natural variability of the Australian climate is being increasingly drowned out by the steady signal of anthropogenic warming.

Experts argue that the 1961–1990 average, used as a benchmark for decades, may no longer be relevant for a nation currently experiencing 21st-century extremes.

As we move further into 2026, the question is not whether the baseline will return to normal, but how much further it will climb.

The Great Barrier Reef: A Tale of Two Stresses

The Great Barrier Reef is currently the epicentre of a complex climate battleground, where the threats are no longer just thermal, but also hydrological.

As of February 5, 2026, the Reef is caught in a pincer movement between lingering heat stress and the sudden influx of terrestrial runoff.

Recent aerial and underwater surveys have detected "high" levels of coral bleaching in the Southern region, with 31–60% of surveyed corals showing signs of pigment loss. ^[5]

Sea surface temperatures remain between 0.3°C and 0.7°C above the seasonal average, keeping the Reef on a knife-edge of a potential mass bleaching event. ^[4]

While heat is a well-known adversary, the arrival of Ex-Tropical Cyclone Koji in January 2026 has introduced a secondary, more insidious stressor.

The storm dumped record-breaking rainfall across the Queensland coast, resulting in massive freshwater plumes that have extended far into the inshore reef systems. ^[6]

These plumes carry vast quantities of sediment and agricultural nutrients, which can "smother" coral polyps and block the sunlight necessary for photosynthesis. ^[7]

While the rain provided a temporary, localised cooling effect, the trade-off has been a significant drop in salinity levels that can lead to "freshwater bleaching."

Marine biologists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) are concerned that the cumulative impact of these stresses will reduce the Reef's ability to recover during the winter months. ^[5]

The sediment plumes are particularly damaging to the fragile branching corals that serve as critical habitats for fish species.

This dual-stress scenario highlights the multifaceted nature of climate change, where one "relief" (rainfall cooling the water) creates another catastrophic problem (sediment runoff).

The Reef’s resilience is being tested to its absolute limit, as it navigates a summer defined by both fire in the water and floods from the land.

The "62-70% Sprint" (New Policy)

The political landscape in Canberra underwent a seismic shift in late 2025 when the Australian government officially updated its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). ^[8]

Recognising that the previous targets were insufficient to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, the new commitment aims for a 62–70% reduction in emissions by 2035.

This new target represents one of the most ambitious climate pivots in the nation’s history, moving Australia from a laggard to a leader in the developed world.

However, the scale of the challenge is immense, as hitting these numbers requires the rate of emissions reduction to triple over the next ten years. ^[11]

The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) has indicated that this "sprint" will involve every sector of the economy, from heavy industry to domestic transport. ^[8]

Central to this strategy is the massive expansion of the "Capacity Investment Scheme," which aims to provide a safety net for the rapid deployment of renewable energy and storage. ^[10]

The 2026 Integrated System Plan (ISP), released by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), provides the blueprint for this transformation. ^[9]

The ISP makes it clear that the transition is no longer a choice but a logistical necessity to prevent a complete collapse of the ageing energy grid.

Policy analysts suggest that the 62–70% target is not just an environmental goal but a prerequisite for Australia’s future economic competitiveness in a decarbonising global market.

Green hydrogen, critical mineral extraction, and large-scale solar exports are expected to form the backbone of this new economy.

Yet, the political cost of such a rapid shift remains high, with regional communities and trade unions seeking guarantees that no worker will be left behind.

The 2035 target has set the stage for a decade of intense legislative activity and industrial disruption.

AEMO and the End of Coal

The most confronting aspect of the 2026 Integrated System Plan is the projected timeline for the retirement of Australia’s coal-fired power stations.

AEMO projects that approximately two-thirds of the remaining coal fleet will be decommissioned by 2035, leaving a massive gap in the nation’s baseload power supply. ^[12]

To fill this void, Australia must build out its renewable energy capacity and transmission infrastructure at a pace never before seen in the Southern Hemisphere.

The Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) has been designated as the primary tool to incentivise the billions of dollars in private investment required for this build-out. ^[10]

Grid stability is the paramount concern for AEMO, which is tasked with managing the influx of variable renewable energy while ensuring the "lights stay on."

The 2026 ISP emphasizes that the "firming" of the grid—via batteries, pumped hydro, and gas-fired peaking plants—is the most urgent priority for the next five years. ^[9]

Many of Australia’s coal plants are reaching the end of their operational lives, becoming increasingly unreliable and expensive to maintain.

The sudden closure of major plants like Eraring or Yallourn could trigger price spikes and supply shortfalls if the renewable replacements are not ready.

AEMO’s data suggests that the transition to a 82% renewable grid by 2030 is still technically feasible but requires immediate and sustained action. ^[12]

The social license for this transition is also under pressure, as the construction of high-voltage transmission lines often faces opposition from local landholders.

Despite these hurdles, the economic reality of cheap wind and solar is driving the market faster than many politicians had anticipated.

The end of coal in Australia is no longer a distant prospect but a looming deadline that will define the success or failure of the 2035 Sprint.

Analytical Summary

The climate data of 2025 and early 2026 confirms that Australia has entered an era of "unprecedented volatility" where traditional climate models provide little comfort.

The emergence of the "Heat-Niña" demonstrates that global ocean heating has reached a threshold where it can neutralise historical cooling cycles.

On the Great Barrier Reef, the dual pressures of thermal bleaching and sediment plumes from extreme weather events create a compounding crisis that threatens the very existence of the ecosystem.

The federal government’s 62–70% emissions target for 2035 is a necessary, albeit late, response to these physical realities, demanding a tripling of current reduction efforts.

The rapid retirement of coal, as outlined by AEMO, represents the most significant industrial transformation in Australian history, fraught with both technical and social risks.

Ultimately, the "broken baseline" of 2025 serves as a final warning that the cost of inaction is now far higher than the cost of a rapid, radical transition.

References

1. Bureau of Meteorology - Annual Climate Statement 2025
2. Bureau of Meteorology - Time Series of Australian Temperatures
3. Bureau of Meteorology - Australian Rainfall and Temperature History
4. Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority - Current Reef Health
5. Australian Institute of Marine Science - Long-term Reef Monitoring
6. Bureau of Meteorology - Tropical Cyclone History and Impacts
7. Australian Institute of Marine Science - Water Quality and Sedimentation Research
8. DCCEEW - Australia's Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC)
9. AEMO - 2026 Integrated System Plan (ISP)
10. DCCEEW - Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) Overview
11. Climate Council - Analysis of 2035 Emissions Targets
12. AEMO - Coal Fleet Retirement Projections and Grid Stability

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