Climate change: It's time to panic

October 22, 2025

Chas Keys was remarkably sanguine in addressing climate denialism. Along with the biodiversity crisis, climate change is the greatest threat the planet faces. Those who deny the massive evidence surrounding climate change, deserve public condemnation and ridicule because they threaten the quality of the future of our children and grandchildren, indeed their very existence.

What Trump has done in the US in removing even the mention of climate change in some government departments, in abandoning the Paris Agreement, and bolstering the fossil fuel industries while throwing a spanner in the works of the renewable energy transition, is profoundly irresponsible. Indeed, it’s wicked.

Here at home, what is galling about Barnaby Joyce and his fellow Nationals threatening to back out of net zero by 2050 is that they somehow think they have taken the high moral ground. On the contrary, it is extremely immoral because it creates uncertainty and reduces investment in the necessary energy transition. It is also just plain ignorant and stupid. If there is to be any change to the target of net zero by 2050, it is the date. It needs to be 2035, not 2050, if we are to stay as close to 1.5°C as possible.