The Climate COP too scared to mention Fossil Fuels

Imagine a global conference on lung health where the organisers keep tobacco off the agenda because its too politically difficult. Better to focus on hospitals, treatments and helping people live with the damage. Welcome to the reality of COP31.

Australia and Türkiye have deliberately kept direct action on cutting fossil fuels off the agenda. Think about that. The countries steering the world’s climate conference have sidestepped the central cause of the crisis because dealing with it was too hard. That’s timidity dressed as pragmatism. It also reflects the performative nature of the Albanese government.

Our Prime Minister’s opening address captured the contradiction. Anthony Albanese spoke about Pacific communities threatened by rising seas. He celebrated Australian solar panels and batteries. He urged the world to act. But he didn’t even mention fossil fuels. Asked about the omission, he replied: “You can pick out any number of things that weren’t in what was a short speech.” But coal, oil and gas are hardly incidental details at a climate conference.

Others at COP31 are confronting fossil fuels directly, including Brazil, which has presented a transition roadmap. But the summit’s leadership is shutting that down under the banner of “pragmatic consensus”. According to Laura Tingle, who’s reporting from Türkiye, Australia is helping to choose avoidance.

As a former deputy head of Australia’s UN climate negotiating team, I understand how difficult these negotiations are. Countries arrive with competing interests. Consensus takes patient work. A negotiating president can’t impose an outcome. But leadership requires a willingness to confront those difficulties. Otherwise, the countries most resistant to change get to determine the limits of ambition before the substantive bargaining has even begun.

Australia wanted the prestige of hosting a COP. But our conduct in Türkiye now raises an uncomfortable question: how much of that ambition was about the outcome, and how much was about the performance? So far, the balance looks badly wrong. The flags, the speeches, the photographs with world leaders: all the ingredients for another polished social media post from Anthony Albanese. But the real measure of leadership is what changes after the cameras leave. This summit seems is producing plenty of content for the Prime Minister’s social media feeds, but far too little for the climate.

The centrepiece promoted by Australia and Türkiye has been a target to increase electricity’s share of global energy consumption to 35 per cent by 2035. Yet the proposal doesn’t even require the additional electricity to come from clean sources - it can come from burning more coal and gas!

Yes, electrification matters. I support it. We should accelerate electric transport, efficient appliances, renewable generation, storage and better grids. But we also need an explicit plan to wind down the fossil fuels they’re supposed to replace. Building clean alternatives can’t become an excuse for indefinitely postponing that work.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has been clear: expanding fossil fuel production is incompatible with claiming commitment to the 1.5-degree goal. Governments need credible transition plans that protect workers and communities. Australia should be helping turn that challenge into an outcome. Instead, we’re offerig the world the same contradiction that defines our climate politics at home: celebrate the clean energy transition while pursuing continued coal and gas expansionism.

I still believe in the United Nations. International cooperation remains indispensable. Having worked inside that system, I know both its limitations and its necessity. That belief makes me more demanding of Australian leadership. Because when a climate summit appears to be treading water, we should remember that the water is rising.

COP31 isn’t over. There is still an opportunity to strengthen its outcome and advance a credible transition away from fossil fuels. I’ll judge the final agreement on what it actually delivers. But Australia’s deliberate choice to keep direct fossil fuel cuts off the agenda is already a serious failure of ambition. It’s prioritisation of performance over substance.

Photo from the Sydney Morning Herald.