Australia’s ‘Climate Election’ Finally Arrived. Will It Be Enough?
Voters rejected the deny-and-delay approach that has made Australia a global laggard on emission cuts. But how far the new government will go remains to be seen. SYDNEY, Australia A few minutes after taking the stage to declare victory in Australias election on Saturday, Anthony Albanese, the incoming Labor prime minister, promised to transform climate change from a source of political conflict into a generator of economic growth. Together we can end the climate wars, he told his supporters, who cheered for several seconds. Together we can take advantage of the opportunity for Australia to be a renewable energy superpower. With that comment and his win along with a surge of votes for candidates outside the two-party system the likelihood of a significant shift in Australias climate policy has suddenly increased. How far the country goes will depend on the final tallies, which are still being counted. But for voters, activists and scientists who spent years in despair, lamenting the on the conservatives who have run Australia for most of the past three decades, Saturdays results amount to an extraordinary reversal. A country known as a global , with minimal 2030 targets for cuts to carbon emissions, has finally tossed aside a deny-and-delay approach to climate change that most Australians, , have said they no longer want. This is the long-overdue climate election Australia has been waiting for, said Joelle Gergis, an award-winning climate scientist and writer from the Australian National University. It was a defining moment in our nations history. Yet it remains to be seen whether the factors that led to that shift can be as powerful and persuasive as the countervailing forces which are so entrenched. In Australia, as in the United States, ending or altering many decades worth of traditional energy habits will be difficult. In the last fiscal year alone, Australian federal, state and territory governments provided about ($8.2 billion) worth of subsidies to coal and other fossil fuel industries. An additional Australian dollars ($39 billion) has already been committed to subsidizing gas and oil extraction, coal-fired power, coal railways, ports and carbon capture and storage (even though ). As Dr. Gergis pointed out in a recent essay, That is 10 times more than the , and over 50 times the budget of the . In other words, Australia still spends far more money to bolster the companies causing the planet to warm than it does helping people deal with the costs tied to the greenhouse gases they emit. Over the past few years, there has been a buildup in renewable energy investment, too, but nothing on the same scale. And during the campaign, Mr. Albaneses Labor Party tried to avoid directly tackling that mismatch. On Election Day in Singleton, a bustling town north of Sydney in New South Wales, where over 20 percent of residents work in mining, Labor banners reading Send a miner to Canberra hung next to signs from the National Party, part of the departing conservative coalition, that read Protect local mining jobs. And both parties candidates were upbeat about the regions mining future. While people are buying our coal well definitely be selling it, said Dan Repacholi, a former miner who won the seat for Labor. The coal mining industry is thriving in the area, but so is private investment in renewables, especially hydrogen. Were going to have a massive boom here through both of those industries going up and up and up, Mr. Repacholi said. During the campaign, Mr. Albanese positioned himself as a both-and candidate, pledging support for new coal mines as well as renewables in large part, to hold on to blue-collar areas like Singleton. But now he will face a lot of pressure to go further on climate, faster. The great swing against the conservative coalition on Saturday included a groundswell for the Australian Greens, who could end up being needed by Labor to form a minority government. Adam Bandt, the Greens leader, has said that a ban on new coal and gas projects would be the partys top priority in any power-sharing agreement. Several new independent lawmakers, who campaigned on demands for Australia to increase its 2030 target for carbon emission cuts to 60 percent below 2005 levels far beyond Labors 43 percent commitment will also be pressuring Mr. Albanese and his opposition. Both sides of politics are going to have to reorient themselves, said Saul Griffith, an energy policy expert who that would make it easier for people to power their cars and heat their homes with electricity. This is a very clear message on climate. Like many other experts, Mr. Griffith said he was not particularly interested in bold official promises to end coal mining, which he expects to fade on its own through economic pressure. New gas projects present a bigger problem. An immense extraction effort being planned for the gas fields of the in the Northern Territory could produce enough carbon emissions to destroy any hope of Australias meeting reduction targets on par with those of other developed nations. Climate action advocates are mostly hoping to start with legislation like the bill introduced by Zali Steggall, an independent, which would set up a framework for setting stricter emissions targets and working toward them through rigorous science and research. Robyn Eckersley, an expert on the politics of climate change at the University of Melbourne, warned that Labor, the Greens and independents needed to play a long game, keeping in mind that that set Australian climate policy back by nearly a decade. Fixating on a single number or a single idea, she said, would impede progress and momentum. Its important to get something in and build a consensus around it, Professor Eckersley said. Having debates about how to improve it is better than swinging back and forth between something and nothing. Mr. Griffith said Australia had a shot at becoming a global model for the energy transition that climate change requires by leveraging its record-breaking uptake of rooftop solar. More than one in four homes in Australia now have solar panels, ; they provide electricity for about one-fifth of what it costs through the traditional grid. The real action on climate has got to be community-led, Mr. Griffith said. He argued that the election results were encouraging because they showed the issue resonating with a wider range of the electorate. Its a less divisive set of politics, its coming from the center, he said. Its a middle-class uprising, and so the climate action isnt as partisan. Sadly, its taken a lot of suffering to get there. Australia has fully from the record-breaking bush fires of 2020, which were followed by two years of widespread flooding. The Great Barrier Reef also just experienced its disturbingly, the first during a La Nina climate pattern, when cooler temperatures typically prevent overheating. People no longer need to use their imaginations to try and understand what climate change looks like in this country, Dr. Gergis said. Australians have been living the consequences of inaction. Yan Zhuang contributed reporting from Singleton, Australia. is the bureau chief in Sydney, Australia. He previously reported from Mexico City, Havana, Beirut and Baghdad. Since joining The Times in 2004, he has also been a deputy National editor, Miami bureau chief and a Metro reporter.