A concerning absence of concern

June 25, 2025

David Spratt makes it clear that we have a whole aria of canaries singing their last in the climate coalmine. Climate scientists see the risk; climate activists encourage effective policy. But nothing will be achieved without committed government action.

This crisis is evolving rapidly; time to stem its impact is short. In the absence of government action, government inaction represents an alternative action decision.

Theories why Labor’s first government was reluctant to take substantial action on our changing climate include political timidity and political caution; the power of fossil fuel lobbyists and donations were others. Labor’s thumping majority in their second term should remove their need for timidity or caution, though the fossil fuel industry’s influence will remain. Perhaps there is a further factor which could contribute to Labor’s continuing underwhelming climate response: an absence of real concern.

To arrest our climate and environmental decline, we need scientifically defensible environmental protection laws, no more oil and gas projects — new projects or extensions — and policies which support and deliver environmental outcomes as close as we can now get to our Paris commitments and to UNIPCC requirements. And we need, above all, a government concerned enough to make these happen.