Fossil fuel exports place Australia among world’s top climate polluters

A UNSW Australian Human Rights Institute report shows Australia’s fossil fuel exports are a significant contributor to global warming.

Australia presents itself as a small player in global climate change. Its population is small and its percentage of global emissions is a comparatively low 1.1%. But when the emissions from Australia’s fossil fuel exports are added to its domestic emissions, Australia is shown to be a significant contributor to global warming and climate change.

New research has revealed Australia is the second-largest climate polluter when calculated by total carbon emissions from its massive fossil fuel exports – beaten only by Russia, but ahead of every OPEC country and the United States.

Commissioned by UNSW Sydney’s Australian Human Rights Institute through its Australian Climate Accountability Project and undertaken by Climate Analytics, the research measures ‘total lifecycle’ carbon emissions for Australia’s fossil fuel exports. It shows those emissions are playing a substantial role in driving climate pollution and global warming.

Released today, Escalation: The destructive force of Australia’s fossil fuel exports on our climate, examines these vast coal and gas exports and the climate consequences for people in Australia.

“Australia’s own fossil fuel exports are doubling back on us and making devastating events like the 2022 Lismore and NSW floods, and the Black Summer bushfires, more likely to happen, more often and more severely,” said Australian Climate Accountability Project lead Gillian Moon, who is a Senior Visiting Fellow at UNSW Law & Justice.

“Our own exports are helping make Australia’s climate more dangerous and costly to live in, selling our children and their futures short.”

The report compiles exports and emissions data and climate risk case studies to show how Australia’s exports are escalating the risks from extreme weather for people in Australia, their homes, their livelihoods and the services on which they depend.

Two years ago, the ‘2022 report of the MJA-Lancet Countdown of Health and Climate Change: Australia unprepared and paying the price’ concluded that “Australia’s greatest threat, including to the health of its people, is not from beyond its borders – it is from within. Australia’s failure to play its part in the mitigation of climate changes and to adequately prepare for its myriad impacts is now costing lives.”

“Incredibly, Australia has no plan for limiting or reducing the exports that are escalating dangerous climate change for its own population. We need to urgently develop our plan for a managed national phase-out of the exports – just as we’re doing for our domestic emissions,” said Ms Moon.

“That’s not asking Australia to abruptly stop the exports; it’s asking for Australia to have a concrete and ambitious plan where we work cooperatively with affected communities and our overseas buyers towards an orderly and just phase-out of these massively polluting exports.”

The report says a phase out would be a progressive, responsible signal and could well be game-changing for climate change. Australia is one of only a small handful of countries with the combination of huge fossil fuel resources, obvious alternatives from enviable renewables and outsized ‘soft power’ that could trigger change on a global scale.

Key findings

• Australia presents itself as a minor contributor to climate change when, in fact, it is one of the world’s largest fossil fuel-exporting states. It also has no policy to restrict or limit its fossil fuel exports.
   
• Emissions from Australia’s fossil fuel exports are doubling back in the form of escalating climate risks, damage and destruction for its own population.
   
• Australia must urgently implement an ambitious national plan to phase-out its fossil fuel export production in an orderly, cooperative and just manner.
  
  
• Australia’s economy is quite diverse and not particularly dependent on fossil fuel production.