2024 was the hottest year on record. The last 10 years have been the 10 hottest years on record. It has now been 48 years since the earth had a colder than average year. Almost daily news stories tell of the latest climate related catastrophe. The recent flooding in New South Wales was more destructive due to the impacts of climate change. 20 years ago was the time to act, now it’s a matter of damage limitation.
This is not to say that it’s too late to act. Rather, it highlights that capitalism has failed in its task of responding to the climate crisis. Only socialist system change offers any path out of the climate crisis for humanity. This will be on the basis of workers taking democratic control of society and directing the vast resources available, currently owned and controlled by billionaires, to address climate change.
If global emissions were cut to zero tomorrow we will still see the impacts of what has already been emitted through rising temperatures and more frequent extreme weather events. In reality global C02 emissions continue to increase with 2024 also being a record year for emissions. The 2024 Global Carbon Budget projects emission last year to be 41.6 billion tonnes, the most ever emitted in a single year. The previous record was 40.6 billion tonnes in 2023.
Despite this, in Australia the main political parties use global inaction as cover to continue to support the use and export of fossil fuels. ‘If we don’t sell it to them someone else will’ – the drug dealer’s defence. This is practiced by both Labor and the Coalition parties on Australia.
Since the turn of the century Australian gas exports have been growing, with a sharp increase from around 2015 that saw gas exports rocket from 30Mt to 80Mt in just a few years. Astonishingly, while this dual pilfering of resources and fueling of the climate crisis occurs, domestically, Australian workers face gas shortages and price shocks. When the Gladstone gas export terminals opened in 2014 Australians saw a tripling of gas prices as the domestic price was inflated to match international rates. So poorly is the energy transition being managed by the capitalist parties that they allow fossil fuels to be extracted at record rates while they are unable to ensure supply at home. Even more farcical is their unwillingness even to modestly tax the profits of the fossil fuel sector.
The federal government is now reportedly considering a gas reservation policy in response to warnings from AEMO, the energy market operator, that there will be a gas shortfall by 2029. Any moves on this front will be ferociously opposed by the gas companies who reap mega profits while paying little to no tax. Teachers pay more through income tax than the gas industry does. More is recovered from HECS payments than is paid in the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax by the gas industry. The Australia Institute reported that in the four years to 2024 the gas industry exported $149 billion worth of gas completely royalty free.
Victoria recently approved a gas import terminal at Corrio Bay. The project is framed as providing an answer to the 2029 gas shortfall. However, this looks at the problem from completely the wrong angle. Rather than continuing reliance on gas and other fossil fuels Australian governments should rapidly increase the capacity of renewable energy, while also electrifying domestic and industrial processes. To facilitate this there should be a large-scale program to install solar on residential properties and to fund people to switch to solar hot water systems, electric induction stoves, and electric heating.
In Victoria when the regulator announced an impending increase to the default market offer for gas they urged consumers to shop around to find the best deal. Why? What a ridiculous system. There is one electricity system. Manage it, produce and distribute the power, and charge people a reasonable rate. Don’t force workers into a pointless dance of constantly having to search out the cheapest deal, which, for busy working people, is not the way people want to, or should be, spending their already meagre free time.
The recent approval by Anthony Albanese’s environment minister Murray Watt for the extension of the North West Shelf natural gas project is a disgrace. The extension of the gas works threatens the Murujuga Aboriginal rock art, some of which are 50,000 years old and include the oldest depiction of a human face in the world. Multiple reports, including those commissioned by the West Australian government, have detailed extensive degradation due to industrial pollution. In light of the North West Shelf decision UNESCO has deferred their listing of the Murujuga rock art on the World Heritage register. Watt was warned that approval of the North West Shelf would torpedo the bid and approved the project anyway.
The decision by the Albanese government to approve the North West Shelf extension to 2070 highlights the broken environmental laws. Under the legislation there is no consideration of climate impacts. Australia, as a fossil fuel exporter, also fails to count the emissions associated with burning coal and gas once they leave Australian shores. Those emissions care less about national boundaries and Australians will face the consequences of a worsening climate crisis and the associated and escalating clean up bill from the floods, droughts, and fires that will continue with increased frequency and severity.
It would be a mistake to conclude however that improved environmental laws will solve the problem. Resource companies plan these projects over the course of decades. Today the life of the gas plant is extended, in another decade, as the existing gas fields dwindle, the only logical answer is to approve the opening of the next gas field, in this case the Browse. Running the North West Shelf at capacity until 2070 will release over 4 billion tonnes of carbon. That’s 10 years of Australia’s current annual emissions.
By 2030 it is estimated that the annual cost of damages due to climate change will be $300 billion. This is likely an underestimate. The 2024 Global Water Monitor report notes that damages, made worse by climate change, due just to water-related disasters in 2024 totalled $550 billion. The impacts included over 8,700 deaths and 40 million people being displaced by events such as flash floods, landslides, and tropical cyclones.
The unfortunate truth is that this is not mismanagement but actually a system working perfectly as designed. The profits of the fossil fuel sector are prioritised by the major parties, both of whom receive significant funding from gas corporations.
Capitalist markets have also demonstrated their inability to respond to this crisis. Mike Wirth, Chevron Chairman and CEO, bragged that “In 2023, we returned more cash to shareholders and produced more oil and natural gas than any year in the company’s history”. The five major oil companies collectively made $128 billion in profits in 2023, a year in which the global oil and gas sector earned $2.4 trillion.
Marian Wilkinsons 2020 book The Carbon Club brilliantly detailed the entanglement of key figures in the corporate, media, and political spheres. This is people such as Gina Rhinehart, Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones, Tony Abbot, and Barnaby Joyce, the Carbon Club, and how this club has ensured that Australia remains a major fossil fuel exporter.
These same players have also stymied any attempts at even modest legislation to manage the energy transition through market mechanisms, such as the Rudd government’s attempted carbon trading scheme or the Gillard government’s carbon tax. Not that either of these schemes would have been effective in reducing the burning of fossil fuels, as demonstrated by the failure of the European Union’s (EU) Emissions Trading System. Climate Action Tracker rates the EU’s climate response as ‘insufficient’ with current policies and actions not compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C. Australia has earned the same ‘insufficient’ score, in fact there is not a single country in the world that is rated as having policies in place that are consistent with the Paris Agreement target of 1.5C.
Countries backtracking on climate targets
Despite the already insufficient action being implemented many countries are backtracking on climate targets. Global instability, with conflicts in Ukraine and the ongoing slaughter in Gaza, is opening up a period of militarisation. The Trump regime is pushing allies to increase defence spending, with the UK government agreeing to increase military spending to 2.7% of GDP by 2027. Australia is likewise being pressured to increase its defence budget to 3% of GDP from current spending of around 2%. Conflicts result in massive emissions. One study found that the carbon footprint from the first 15 months of Israel’s war on Gaza is greater than a hundred individual countries. Militerisation will also result in resources being redirected from efforts to combat climate change and should be opposed by workers and their trade unions.
The nuclear policy the Coalition took to the recent federal election was right out of the playbook of the Carbon Club. The policy was not about reducing emissions by transitioning to nuclear energy. It was designed to delay investment in renewables and to maximise the life of coal and gas electricity production. Their energy policy was in fact a political policy, designed to allow the Coalition to sign up to net zero while having no intention of meeting that target, thus appeasing both moderates and the climate deniers within the Coalition. Nationals Senator Matt Canavan was brazen enough to admit as much.
It would take decades to establish a nuclear power industry in Australia and there is no feasible way it can be implemented in the timeframe required to respond to the climate crisis. It is also massively costly. According to the CSIRO the price of producing electricity by nuclear power is twice that of renewables. This is if you even accept that it is a good idea. Despite technological advances nuclear power is inherently risky, with the Fukushima catastrophe only the latest in a long history of catastrophic failures for nuclear power. Even then, there is still no solution for housing the dangerous waste produced by nuclear reactors which remains dangerous for thousands of years. In short, it is expensive, risky, and unnecessary. Australia has abundant resources to produce reliable electricity from renewables alone.
Interviewed on a recent 4 Corners, Coalition MP Andrew Hastie, described net zero as a straight jacket. He argued that it was contradictory for Australia to sell coal and gas overseas while domestically we transition to net zero. Hastie is right about the hypocrisy, however, his mistake is that we should therefore burn fossil fuels here. Rather, Australia should ban the export of fossil fuels, including for projects and contracts already in place, with no compensation for fossil fuel companies.
Australia needs to urgently and immediately transition to renewable energy. Acting now on electricity generation maximises the time available to solve the more complex aspects of net zero such as transitioning industrial processes away from gas and scaling up green steel. As can be seen from the glacial speed of the renewables transition this raises the need for nationalisation and public ownership of industry. It is only by taking control of the important sectors of the economy that we can ensure that jobs for workers are guaranteed while we navigate the most significant economic upheaval since the industrial revolution.
The current concentration of CO2e in the atmosphere is over 425ppm. The generally agreed safe limit is 350ppm, so we have already exceeded that target and will need to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere to return to safe levels. The last time the earth’s CO2 concentration was consistently over 300ppm temperatures were 2-3C warmer and sea levels 15-25m higher. You have to go back over 15 million years to find the last time CO2 was over 400ppm. The earth was a radically different place.
What this means in terms of potential impacts to working people is unclear while capitalism continues to fail to act. Average global temperatures are already 1.2C over pre industrial levels and monthly temperatures regularly breach the 1.5C Paris target. More warming is already locked in and until the political equation is shifted the outlook will only worsen. What is required is the entry of working people into the struggle in an organised form through demonstrations, strikes, and fundamentally the formation of new left mass political parties based on socialist policies.
Following the landslide victory for the Albanese government at the 2025 federal election many on the liberal left point to the potential for Labor to shift to the left and enact a bold environmental program. Labor has control of the lower house, and with the Greens has the numbers in the senate to pass legislation without the Coalition or the crossbench. However, this perspective ignores the actions of the Labor government to date. In the first year alone of the Albanese government the gas companies donated over $800,000 to the Labor party. Labor will not act on climate change unless forced to do so by the organised working class.
Many environmentalists, frustrated by the inertia of the organised working class, are attracted to the idea of radical action by individuals. Organisations such as Extinction Rebellion promote the idea that the power of the working class moving into action in an organised manner can be substituted by small groups of people engaging in performative headline grabbing protests, sometimes causing significant disruption. While we stand in solidarity with the intention of these activists, history has demonstrated that such shortcuts don’t yield results.
There are lessons here in the green bans implemented by the Builders Laborers Federation (BLF) in Australia in the 1970s. Under the green bans workers took action to protect open space, housing, and sites of historic significance. The results of the green bans can still be seen today, particularly in the public open spaces protected from inappropriate development.
The current trade union leaders too often see even strike action for pay and conditions a bridge too far. They lack the courage and vision to organise and lead workers into struggle. The task for workers is to reclaim and rebuild their unions as fighting organisations that will act in the industrial and political spheres.
As part of this fight it is vital to highlight the principle of the just transition. Workers in the fossil fuel industry should not be the ones to pay the price of the transition. Left to the market this is inevitable, as seen following the abandonment of the car industry in Australia, and countless times before. Only by nationalising impacted industries and guaranteeing the job of every worker can we ensure the transition is managed in the interest of working people.
It is only the working class that can lead this struggle to fight for the planet we all live on.