Australia cannot credibly claim climate leadership while expanding coal and gas exports that accelerate global heating, deepen Pacific vulnerability and lock in further human suffering.

For years the Earth has been absorbing more energy from solar radiation than it has been emitting to space, due to increasing atmospheric carbon concentrations from fossil fuel use. As a result, the Earth is getting hotter at an accelerating rate. The only solution is to reduce fossil fuel use and draw down carbon from the atmosphere. Any other solution is window-dressing.

Prime Minister Albanese and his entourage were in Fiji this week for the Pre-COP Leaders meeting, intent on spruiking Australia’s climate leadership role and bolstering our claim to be the security partner of choice in the Pacific. Integrating these themes into concern for climate security has become fashionable, providing devious political players with the ability to escalate destructive militarisation under the guise of humanitarian concern to manage climate impacts, which in the Pacific are now genuinely existential for many countries.

The Pacific nations are rightly angry at Australia’s duplicitous climate policy. The government has done some good in accelerating the growth of renewable energy, for example with incentives for solar and battery installation, and in transforming the electricity grid away from fossil fuels. On the other hand, those benefits are vastly outweighed by its insistence on massive expansion of gas and coal projects, primarily for export, thereby maintaining our position as the world’s third-largest fossil fuel exporter.

The government has been fully briefed by experts and its own agencies on the existential threat of climate change – the greatest threat the world faces, with the potential to wipe much of humanity from the face of the Earth. It is here now, accelerating and rapidly moving beyond human influence, as the current........

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