More than 1,000 media pieces from major outlets mentioned climate change during the peak of the Black Summer bushfires. In February this year, there were just 250.
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| Major flooding in Lismore, NSW, from Tropical Cyclone Alfred (Image: AAP/Jason O'Brien) |
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Author
Ketan Joshi is a writer, analyst, and communications consultant focusing on clean energy and climate change.He previously worked in climate and energy for private companies and government agencies, and now writes journalism and commentary from the front lines of climate and energy battles around the world. He is based in Oslo and consults to organisations addressing the climate crisis. |
Australia’s election date was decided by climate change.
Like every other major weather event of the past decade, Cyclone Alfred emerged in an atmosphere sweltering due to the heat-trapping effect of greenhouse gases. That made it hit harder and more unpredictably.
Alfred tracked much farther south than cyclones normally do, so homes in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales were battered.
Albanese was forced to shift his election announcement, with both major parties having to deal with a surprise budget. It was weirdly fitting: a climate-intensified disaster playing a major role in deciding the timing of an election campaign that will refuse to directly engage with the urgency of fossil fuel elimination.
The days of the 2019 climate strikes have come and gone. Few want to say it aloud: Australia has entered a completely new phase of climate discourse. During the peak of the Black Summer bushfires, there were more than 1,000 pieces mentioning climate change in selected major print media outlets. In February 2025, there were about 250. Concerns have shifted towards the cost of living.
When it comes to the cost of power generation technologies, nuclear, coal, and gas are the most expensive, while wind and solar are the cheapest.
However, Australians believe the opposite is true: polling shows 57% of respondents underestimate the percentage of renewables in Australia’s grids, and there is worryingly deep support for the expansion of new fossil gas extraction sites (alongside widespread acceptance of the “need” for gas in the “long term”). Incredibly, even the basic acceptance that human-induced heating is occurring shows early signs of weakening.
During the COVID pandemic, we were scared of death, disease and loss, but at some point in the past few years, we stopped being scared of the terrifying outcomes of fossil fuel reliance. Part of this is self-inflicted by people like me.
Back in the mid-2010s, it emerged that we as climate communicators needed to talk more explicitly about the benefits of technologies like wind, solar, electric vehicles, and heat pumps: they’re cheaper, shinier, and modern. The notes we strike should be optimistic.
But these are side benefits. The heart of the story is that this is a massive harm-minimisation project that lives or dies on how rapidly we eliminate a trio of harmful substances from society.
Is it any surprise that polls are showing the public is massively disconnecting from the sheer physical urgency of the problem, when so much of the focus has been on the power bill savings of solar panels and not on the immediate and deadly threat posed by a coal-fired power station?
Dutton now has the space to freely propose policies that actively incentivise the increased burning of fossil fuels in Australia. It is no accident that the opposition leader’s core energy message is promising to more heavily subsidise the use of oil and gas in Australia.
Under his proposals, wealthy people doing their shopping using gas-guzzling luxury utes and four-wheel drives will see a massive cut to their fossil fuel costs, through a deep cut to the taxation of road transport fuels.
Dutton is promising to reserve a proportion of Australia’s gas for domestic use, on the grounds that ramping up supply of this fossil fuel will bring down power bills (a policy requested by crossbench senators including Jacqui Lambie and Rex Patrick).
At the time of writing, Australia’s core gas lobby groups haven’t yet screamed in outrage — presumably because Dutton is also offering to take an axe to the already generous approvals process for new gas extraction sites. Both the fuel excise cut and the gas extraction policies act as effective subsidies for fossil fuels.
The Coalition’s nuclear plan would almost certainly do nothing beyond massively increasing the lifespans of Australia’s unreliable coal-fired power fleet over the coming decades (to the delight of utilities more than willing to eat up subsidies to keep those plants polluting longer).
Labor has not been as brazen in proposing fossil fuel subsidies disguised as cost of living policies, but they suffer the same affliction in avoiding the issue at hand. Generous energy bill subsidies are vote-winners, but they don’t help get expensive fossil fuels out of power grids (particularly gas, the cost of which is a primary driver of wholesale electricity prices).
It is an absurd thing to spectate a debate about fossil fuels that refuses to mention the physical consequences of their use. Imagine gun control advocates in the US talking solely about the financial savings of not paying for bullets.
We want to stop burning coal, oil and gas because they rapidly wreck the physical systems we rely on to live. The fact that climate impacts are pulling the levers of this election’s schedule lays it out pretty neatly: the laws of physics don’t change based on our beliefs and our statements.
Maybe this election is the perfect time to get back to the heart of the matter: fossil fuels are deadly, and we need to ditch them ASAP.
Links
- Newspaper coverage of climate change or global warming in five Australian newspapers
- Dutton’s nuclear promises billions for fossil fuels and a smaller economy for the rest of us
- While the government denies the science on carbon credits, the climate suffers
- This election, here’s what Australians across age groups and postcodes want from the next government
- Housing, cost of living and climate change top list of what concerns voters most in Your Say
- The 2025 federal budget fails the millions of voters who want action on Australia’s struggling environment
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