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‘Now is the hour’: Australian Labor urged to speed up fossil fuel phase-out to justify Cop30 pledge
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2025
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Labor: no thanks, we'll just dig it all up and ship it overseas with barely any royalties and then do some creative accounting with offsets that we know are bullshit anyway.
Australia is among only 24 countries that will meet next April for a conference co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands to work on plans for a complete fossil fuel phase-out. Other participating countries include Austria, Belgium, Cambodia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Fiji, Finland, Ireland, Jamaica, Kenya, Luxembourg, Marshall Islands, Mexico, Micronesia, Nepal, Panama, Spain, Slovenia, Vanuatu and Tuvalu.
It is these countries that are leading the way in the fight for a better climate.
The two largest economies and historical emitters, the US and China, were as conspicuous in their lack of impact during the COP30 as they were before. U.S. President Donald Trump declined to send representatives as the Washington exits from global climate accords.
And China has once again proven to focus more on its own interests in trade rather than stepping into a stronger leadership role in fighting climate change while it's energy consumption continues to rise at a staggering rate. The country accounts for one third of the of the world's total energy consumption, compared to a fifth 15 years ago, and is responsible for 90% of the increase in these emissions since 2015. China is portraying itself as a leader in climate policy, but when it's leader Xi Jinping announced a decrease of over 7% by 2035 a few weeks ago, he carefully avoided specifying a baseline.
Researchers think that China’s NDC (Nationally Determined Contribution) falls short to limit global warming to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, and striving to stay below 1.5 °C. As Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst who has tracked China’s emissions trends for more than a decade, said in Nature, “Anything less than 20% is definitely not aligned with 2 degrees. Similarly, anything less than 30% is definitely not aligned with 1.5 degrees."
Myllyvirta also says that China's announced emissions cuts — as 7–10% of an undefined amount, rather than specifying a year as the basis for calculation – leaves the door open for short-term emissions increases.
So we should not criticize Australia here, but rather China, the U.S., Russia, and Russia as it is them that opposed to phase out fossil fuels.
Australia also seems opposed to the phase out if they're digging up more coal or opening new gas fields
Australia joins the group of these 24 countries, and they didn't lobby against phasing out fossil fuels - unlike Russia, China, India, the U.S.. Saudi Arabia, and some other oil producing countries.
Australia's reliance on coal-fired power drops to record low in early 2025, the country pledged to end coal consumption by 2038 or earlier (no, that may be not enough, too, but China, India, Russia & Co are not even close to this, and they do nothing that it gets better).
Yeah, coal is decreasing as a share of our domestic usage, but we are still one of the world's biggest coal exporters.