Australia’s politicians, the media, and environmental groups want us to believe that climate change is the biggest environmental threat.
They claim that Australia needs to meet its net zero commitments to prevent “dangerous climate change”, ignoring that Australia is a tiny emitter on the world stage and China is the main source of carbon emissions.
China accounted for 31.5% of the world’s carbon emissions in 2023, according to Our World in Data.
By comparison, Australia accounted for just 1% of the world’s carbon emissions in 2023.
Nearly two-thirds of the world’s carbon emissions increase since 2000 have come from China.
China’s carbon emissions have grown at a near-exponential rate, whereas Australia’s emissions have flatlined for a decade.
China is also the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal.
China consumes 30% more coal than the rest of the world combined.
According to Statista, China has 1,161 coal-fired power plants, 65 times more coal-fired power plants than Australia (18).
China’s government has also granted construction permits for the equivalent of two large new coal-burning power plants every month.
Clearly, the fantasy of ‘net zero’ emissions is delusional without China’s active participation.
Arguably, it would also be better for the world’s climate if developed countries like Australia retained their industrial capacity and burned their hydrocarbon energy, coal and gas, at home rather than exporting both our industry and coal and gas to China to burn.
Curiously, the same media and politicians who continually bleat about ‘net zero’ also promote strong population growth via net overseas migration. In doing so, they ignore the fact that more people necessarily mean more carbon emissions and environmental destruction.
The 2023 Intergenerational Report projected that Australia’s population would grow by 13 million in 39 years.
Indeed, the federal government’s latest State of the Environment Report explicitly ranked population growth as having a “very high impact” on Australia’s biodiversity, whereas “climate change” has a “high impact”:
Given that Australia has direct control over its population size via net overseas migration but has zero control over the world’s climate, shouldn’t politicians, the media, and environmental groups be pushing to minimise the growth in Australia’s population for the sake of the environment?
Instead, they are telling Australians that they must stop burning coal and gas for energy while Australia sends this same coal and gas to China to burn with impunity.
Hand wringing over “net zero” and climate change while supporting mass immigration is akin to fiddling while Australia’s environment burns.
I discussed these issues in my weekend Treasury of Common Sense on Radio 2GB/4BC.
