Australian politics is now descending into a theatre of science-denying absurdity. A mainstream party is now embedded in denial of clear scientific evidence that renewables are the lowest cost option for Australia through to 2050.

With extraordinary bravado, arrogance and a generous dose of ignorance, the National Party now asserts such a rigorously researched finding of AEMO, the CSIRO and a plethora of peer reviewed articles by academics who have spent their careers exploring these issues should be ignored.

Rejection of the 2050 target reveals the deep-seated infection of the National Party with climate change denialism and quasi-denialism – the latter the sleight of hand resting place of those who hide behind a claim there is little need for change. That we are witnessing this policy about-face in 2025 is astonishing. A little shy of 50 years ago, the UN-sponsored World Climate Conference laid out what was even then unchallenged research accurately predicting the dangerous effects on the globe of rising carbon emissions and rising temperatures. Twenty-eight years ago, the alarm bells finally produced concrete action when the 1997 Kyoto protocol was signed, bringing the world together with binding emission reduction targets. By this time, climate change had become one of, if not, the world’s most comprehensively researched phenomena – the product of some 2000 peer reviewed studies by some 2500 of the world’s top academic and scientific experts.

Since then, the fossil fuel industry has waged a vociferous, massively funded, largely covert war to undermine the scientific underpinnings of climate change – ably assisted by the Murdoch press, US billionaire-funded think-tanks and weaponised social media. Much in evidence here is the capture of the Nationals by the mining lobby with its handmaiden, the Murdoch press, busy egging on the Nationals into its quasi-denialism and headlong fight with its Liberal colleagues.

In such an environment, science sceptic dinosaurs have survived and indeed thrived. One of them became our prime minister. Two other such survivors, Senators Matt Canavan and Ross Cadell, together with the Page Research Institute (a National Party built for purpose consulting firm) have produced “research” on which the National Party has relied on to reject carbon neutrality by 2050. Such a choice of authors only adds to the farce accompanying the policy rejection. Both senators were already implacably opposed to the transition to renewables. Canavan has long claimed the role of human-induced carbon emissions in explaining temperature rises is greatly exaggerated while Cadell is on the record as saying weather-dependent renewables “…are not the cheapest and never will sustain industry in Australia”. That assumption, however, was inexplicably never tested in the reports, with the authors admitting they did not estimate the cost of doing nothing.

The heavy lifting of the advice comes from an extraordinarily shoddy PRI report “Delivering a high energy Australia”. Unexposed by the Australian media is that its 40 pages are littered with flawed assumptions, disingenuous assertions and heavily debunked claims. Witness: “Nuclear power stands out as the technology most capable of delivering affordable and reliable energy, with low emissions." The rollout of solar panels, it is asserted, should be in commercial precincts rather than imposing a blight on “pristine landscapes or prime agricultural land”.

Cherry-picking of data is rampant. The CSIRO is quoted as saying new coal-fired generation remains one of the cheapest firm sources of power. Unexplained is that firming costs are a relatively minor part of overall costs. That the CSIRO unequivocally asserts “…renewables remain the lowest‐cost new-build electricity generation technologies” is left unsaid. Unexplained, analysed or modelled is the growing role of the breakdown of ageing coal-fired power plants and gas prices on our power costs.

Absent is reference to reputable modelling of the current and future determinants of power prices despite the presence of plentiful research. The Clean Energy Investor Group’s (2025) modelling shows that without renewables and battery storage assets, Australian wholesale prices in 2024 would have increased annual household electricity bills by between 8-22% ($155-$417).

The federal government’s Australian Energy Market Operator and the CSIRO put the cost of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 at around $122 billion representing the capital cost of generation, storage, firming and transmission. Such a renewable development path, they estimate, would save consumers $18.5 billion in avoided costs (from a do-nothing scenario) and deliver emissions reductions valued at $3.3 billion.The Clean Energy Council of Australia’s 2025 commissioned modelling finds reducing the rollout of renewables by more than a third would increase consumers’ power bills by 30%, or around $450 per annum.

But perhaps the greatest absurdity embedded in the policy backflip is that it clearly runs directly counter to the interests of the party’s own rural and regional electoral base who are already by far the most adversely affected economically by climate change. Just as inexplicable is PRI’s ignoring of the strong net positive return for rural landowners from the transition to renewables. That is coming from its provision of a much needed source of countervailing income for farmers in rural and regional areas susceptible to drought and flood. A wind turbine housed on a rural property can return some $50-60,000 a year to farmers. Transmission line structures give similar returns. A hectare of solar panels can return anything between $1700 to $7500 in NSW (and can still allow the grazing of sheep). The benefits are also now being far more widely spread. State government guidelines for the rollout of both solar and wind projects are requiring substantial grants to the wider community hosting renewable developments.

PCI’s solution for the Nationals is to halve our committed emissions reduction so as to equate to the current OECD average – a nonsensical proposal given any slowing of the renewable rollout would simply further increase power prices. That we should slip back to the OECD average is also flawed logic. Because of our land clearing fudge, our equivalent reduction in carbon emissions is already below the OECD average. And if equity is to be a criterion when compared to developing countries, we should be increasing our emissions reduction (Webb P and I, July 28, 2023). But the PCI’s research is (successfully) aimed at persuading the Nationals that reducing emissions is a cost to the Australian economy. That ignores the already locked-in and currently projected temperature rises which will be inflicting huge economic costs for countries such as Australia. On that basis, reducing emissions can deliver a net economic gain.

For a final thoroughly porous school grade argument, PCI asserts that, given our emission reductions only slightly affects the global total, halving it carries no opprobrium. The blinding obvious fact is that the COP agreement stands or falls on collective adherence to multilateralism. Which is to say Australia, given its modest size, can only meet many of its important goals by depending on a myriad, multilateral economic and security agreements – of which the COP is surely one if not the most important.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.