The Evolution of Climate Denial: And Where Australia Sits

Climate denial used to be easy to recognise. It told us global warming was a hoax, scientists were conspiring for grant money and a day of snow disproved decades of evidence. It sounds just like Donald Trump or Pauline Hanson. Of course that kind of denial remains alive and dangerous. But it’s no longer the only - or even the most politically effective - way to obstruct climate action.

Climate denial has evolved. It's learned to accept the science while denying what the science requires.

Four ways to deny a crisis

A recent Forbes article just described four forms of modern climate denial:

1. Deny the diagnosis: climate change is not happening, or humans are not causing it.

2. Deny the cause: the fire, flood or heatwave was caused by arson, cloud seeding or ordinary weather - not a destabilised climate.

3. Deny the treatment: climate change is real, but every serious response is too expensive, too fast, unfair or impractical.

4. Deny responsibility: action is necessary, but China, consumers, or another industry or group are to blame.

All of these overlap. As one becomes socially unacceptable, another takes its place. Each concedes a little more reality while protecting the same outcome: continuing emissions.

Of course, that doesn’t mean anyone who questions a particular climate policy is a denier. Policies should be scrutinised. But genuine disagreement rejects one policy and offers another capable of achieving a comparable or better result. Treatment denial rejects every proportionate response and substitutes delay, wishful thinking or nothing. Sound familiar? Read on.

Retreating as the danger grows

You‘d expect worsening disasters to produce stronger action. Instead, many governments and corporations that accept the science are increasingly making climate policy reversals. Canada has abandoned or weakened measures covering oil and gas, methane, electricity and electric vehicles. European governments have diluted carbon-market, heating, transport, corporate-accountability and deforestation policies. New Zealand has reopened offshore petroleum exploration and weakened its methane target.

These u-turns are rarely sold as pro-pollution. They arrive dressed as cost-of-living, energy and strategic security, consumer choice and “pragmatism”. But the reality is that by weakening effective action without replacing it, they’re actually instruments of denial.

Where Australia sits

Australia contains all four forms of denialism, but under the Albanese Government we’ve got really good at the last two - treatment denial and responsibility denial. They accept climate science and have undertaken action on renewable energy, batteries, vehicle efficiency and some industrial emissions. Those differences matter. But so does the contradiction - accepting the renewable-energy half of the treatment while refusing the fossil-fuel phase-out half.

Australia's Future Gas Strategy says new gas supplies are needed and commits us to continuing and even expanding our massive gas exports. The Albanese Government approved Woodside’s North West Shelf gas project to operate until 2070 - 20 years beyond our net-zero deadline.

Then comes responsibility denial. We are told emissions from Australian coal and gas belong to the countries that import and burn them. Under international rules, those emissions are indeed counted in the importing country, avoiding double counting. But an accounting convention is not an ethics system. It doesn’t absolve the country that approves, digs up, exports and profits from the fossil fuels. Climate Analytics has calculated that burning Australia’s exported coal and gas produces over 1.1 billion tonnes of CO2 each year. That puts our global carbon footprint at around three times our domestic one. We're outsourcing the smoke and the warming.

What can we do?

First, broaden our understanding of climate denial. Challenge it when it comes from respectable governments and institutions, not only conspiracy theorists. Name treatment denial and responsibility denial when they appear in conversations, media coverage and political debate. Accepting the science is only the first step - not the test of climate credibility.

Second, ask the treatment question: If you oppose this policy, what equally effective alternative do you support? “Not this” is not a climate plan.

Third, challenge the exported-emissions alibi. Australia can’t claim global credit for exporting renewable energy while denying global responsibility for exporting fossil fuels.

Finally, demand specific commitments from our elected representatives: no new coal and gas; a just, and urgent phase-out; consideration of exported emissions in project approvals; an end to fossil-fuel subsidies; and serious transition plans for workers and communities.

Climate denial no longer always arrives shouting that climate change is a hoax. Sometimes it acknowledges the science, announces a distant target - and approves fossil-fuel expansionism until 2070.

Australia may accept the science, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still in climate denial.