By Editor,Peter van Onselen

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PETER VAN ONSELEN: Pull the other one, Chris Bowen. Little old Australia cutting its emissions by a little bit more is not going to spare us ‘the worst’

READ MORE: Australian climate assessment report drops

By PETER VAN ONSELEN, POLITICAL EDITOR, AUSTRALIA

Published: 05:57 BST, 15 September 2025 | Updated: 05:57 BST, 15 September 2025

So the government has sat on a report waiting for the right time to release it. I’m talking about the National Climate Risk Assessment, released today.

It warns of cascading problems in the years ahead courtesy of climate change. Of course, it’s no coincidence that Labor released it shortly before announcing its new 2035 emissions targets.

The climate minister Chris Bowen says: ‘Today the National Climate Risk Assessment is clear: while we can no longer avoid climate impacts, every action we take today towards our goal of net zero by 2050 will help avoid the worst impacts on Australian communities and businesses.’

Really? Australia, incrementally reducing its emissions, will help avoid the worst impacts of climate change? Pull the other one.

The simple fact is that what we emit is a literal drop in the ocean compared to what the big emitters overseas emit.

A nation of our size obviously needs to also cut emissions as part of a global community.

But the idea that if we increase our target (which we likely won’t meet anyway) it will ‘help avoid the worst impacts’ of climate change is absurd.

The idea Australia will avoid worse impacts of climate change because it incrementally increases its emissions targets is absurd, writes Political Editor Peter van Onselen. It won’t matter unless nations with populations in the hundreds of millions and billions do the same

The spin that accompanies justifications for action on climate change makes it almost impossible to take those running their mouths off seriously. And that includes the minister.

Here is a tip: whether or not Australia reduces its emissions by five, 10, 30, 50 or 80 percent in the coming decade won’t make a lick of difference to the impact of climate change over that time and beyond.

Not unless nations with populations in the hundreds of millions and billions do the same. Unsurprisingly, most developing nations are increasing their emissions rather than decreasing them. As you’d expect as they, you know, develop.

I’m no fan of the arguments used by climate change sceptics who rail against any action if big emitters aren’t also reducing emissions.

That flies in the face of ‘doing your bit’. But the other side of this debate is laced with religious zealotry that borders on the absurd.

All Labor is really trying to achieve by promoting this report now is to justify the emissions cuts that are coming. Or more accurately, targets for cuts that probably won’t materialise.

There is a good conservative argument to reduce emissions to plan for potential consequences that we might not like courtesy of the changes to the planet that are happening.

If emissions are going to fall, they must drop in the US — where Trump is taking the country in a very different direction…

Similarly, they would need to plunge in India (a landfill site in Jalandhar above) and China

They are also why mitigation matters, in case the zealots can’t turn the ship around in time before worsening weather events occur.

But instead of a rational debate as well as discussion about how to do all of that, we are inundated with inflated rhetoric that just doesn’t add up.

The real good reason to try and cut emissions (globally most importantly but domestically as part of the global community) is for the longer term. Because it is an unsustainable strategy not to.

Bowen’s attempts to scare people into supporting Labor’s looming new policy on emissions does the rational end of this policy debate a disservice.

The irony is that Labor seeks to crow about the emissions cuts we’ve achieved already, in the same breath that it warns us that without doing more, we are doomed.

It really just makes you wonder what was the point of what’s already been achieved, because all the evidence continues to point to worsening climatic conditions.

That’s because globally emissions keep rising and there is bugger all little old Australia can do about that unless the rest of the world also acts and acts hard and fast.

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PETER VAN ONSELEN: Pull the other one, Chris Bowen. Little old Australia cutting its emissions by a little bit more is not going to spare us ‘the worst’

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