Australia - carbon bomber of the Indo-Pacific

In planning its future release of up to 80 billion tonnes of planet-heating carbon, Australia has committed itself to the destruction of nations and wrecking of big cities throughout the Indo-Pacific Region.

Despite the platitudes of its political leadership, in what amounts to a declaration of war on its lowlying neighbours, Australia – a country that has criticised both Russia and Israel for assaults on their border states – continues to authorise huge fossil fuel developments that will accelerate global warming, ocean rise and the obliteration of entire societies in the Region.

In its greed for yesterday’s energy sources, a country of 26 million will contribute materially to the flood displacement of 230 million people worldwide. Possibly twice that many.

Projections of sea level rise go up with each new study of the threat. The pace at which global oceans are rising has doubled in three decades, and on current trends will double again by 2100. The latest numbers indicate a rise of between 0.5 and 1.9 meters by 2100 under existing carbon emissions. This is around twice the previous estimate.

A key point about sea level rise is that it is irreversible, at least on human timescales. Even if all carbon emissions ceased, the seas will continue to rise due to melting land ice, thermal expansion and the release of stored carbon, for centuries to come. If the Antarctic and Arctic ice sheets melt entirely – as many scientists now fear they may - the maximum rise is of the order of 65 metres above present levels.

Put simply, you would have to live on the 21^st floor of a coastal skyscraper to keep your head above water. You will need a submarine to cross the Sydney Harbour traffic bridge.

Still uncertain is how long it will take for this to happen: while the rate of polar ice melt can be predicted, the rate at which it re-accumulates and the rate at which it slides into the ocean are both much harder to foretell. However, almost every new study indicates that melting is going faster each year.

Even the moderate rise predicted for the present century will inundate 136 of the world’s major cities – including 8 of its ten largest megacities – destroying an estimated $1 trillion’s worth of homes and coastal infrastructure.

At least fifteen nations are at immediate risk from rising seas. Major Indo-Pacific regional victims of climate and sea-level impacts include:

- Maldive Islands

- Tuvalu

- Kiribati

- Palau

- Solomon Islands

- Seychelles

- Vietnam

- Bangladesh

In the IndoPacific region, threatened cities include: Jakarta, Bangkok, Hanoi, Manila, Calcutta and Mumbai, Dhaka, Rangoon, Shenzen, Shanghai, Tianjin and ten other Chinese cities.

In Australia significant parts of Melbourne, Brisbane, the Sunshine and Gold Coasts, Adelaide, Perth and Tasmania will be flooded as sea levels mount.

There is a wilful blindness in Australia’s politicians – chiefly Liberal, Labor and National – to the consequences of their actions in approving new fossil energy ventures, highlighted in the recent extension of the Northwest Shelf Gas. They do not want to know how many human lives and livelihoods they are destroying, so they pretend innocence.

Worse still, they conceal from the Australian public the true impact of our fossil fuel addiction, but reporting national emissions but failing to report emissions from coal, condensate and gas exports. This is a form of deep dishonesty that is akin to lying about genocide.

And let’s call it what it truly is: genocide. Our present energy policy will extinguish up to 80 million human lives and contribute to the destruction of at least a dozen lowlying countries, while turning hundreds of millions into climate refugees. These are not the actions of a good neighbour.

At a meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of State in late 2024, several Pacific countries singled Australia out for criticism for its dishonest climate promises and continued failure to phase out fossil fuels.

The brutal truth is that Australia wants it both ways. It wants to look like a responsible country introducing measures to curb its local emissions – while pretending its energy exports and their massive emissions don’t exist. It wants to hide behind the figleaf that other countries do as much, or more, damage to the global climate. But because someone commits a crime, does not make it ok for everyone to commit the same crime.

Australia has lately been agonising over its dwindling influence and fading reputation in the Indo-Pacific region. Well, wiping out your neighbours, or even doing them serious harm, is never going to make you popular. It is a colonial act of unfeeling arrogance and contempt, for which there will be a heavy price to pay.

It is not as though we lack for alternatives. For example, if we hitched all our solar, wind, tidal, hydro and geothermal resources to undersea HVDC cables (as many countries are already doing), we could be the world’s leading exporter of renewable electricity, direct to the factories, trains and buses of China, India, Indonesia, SE Asia, the Pacific and our own urban centres – and never ship another tonne of fossil carbon. We could win some friends instead of alienating everyone and wrecking our children’s future.

However, to do that Australia needs to become a true leader in renewable energy technologies instead of a laggard. We would have to envisage and implement the new electric-powered world, as China is doing in becoming the world’s first ‘electro-state’. We’ve had the science and technology to do it for over forty years. Just not the industrial vision, political will or economic commonsense.

Snap out of it, Australia.