Climate council logo. Fair use, low resolution image to identify the subject.

Aussie Climate Council Tries to Explain Why Abandoning Net Zero is a Problem

And tacitly admits people would not choose green energy solutions of their own free will.

October 29, 2025
CONSEQUENCES OF ABANDONING NET ZERO

By Climate Council

The Liberal-National Coalition is meeting this week to discuss its climate change policy, with abandoning Australia’s foundational climate change target – net zero climate pollution by 2050 – reportedly on the cards.

This Briefing investigates the consequences for Australia and the world were Australia to take this course of action.

K E Y F I N D I N G S

1. Abandoning net zero and Australia’s other climate targets could increase Australia’s climate pollution by 6.3 billion tonnes more over the next 25 years compared to current targets. That’s equivalent to the annual climate pollution of 3.2 billion Australian cars.
You mean people wouldn’t choose “cheaper” green technology of their own free will?

2. Abandoning net zero is aligned with global temperature rise well above 3°C. Australia would face a future of relentless disasters and economic upheaval:

  • 4 times the number of severe and extreme heatwave days <= even if true, cheaper energy means people can afford to use their air conditioners
  • 1.5 million Australians exposed to coastal flooding by 2050, and 3 million people by 2090. <= build some sea walls
  • Double the number of extreme fire days <= Then improve forest management, to reduce the fire risk. More burnoffs. Cut more fire breaks.
  • Vast regions becoming uninsurable <= Stop building in flood zones, or build some flood defences

3. Reneging on our climate commitments would damage Australia’s global standing and strain ties with Pacific nations that expect us to do more – not less – on climate change. <= Who cares if some corrupt Pacific Island kleptocrats complain about missing out on climate handouts?

4. Abandoning net zero would be an enormous risk to realising the broad benefits of the global clean energy transition, deterring investment in renewables and green exports. <= I thought the green transition was inevitable

Read more: https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Climate-Council-Briefing-29.10.2025-Consequences-of-Abandoning-Net-Zero-.pdf

If this is the worst set of consequences the climate council can think of, to abandoning the waste of hundreds of billions of dollars on Net Zero, our descendants are going to wonder how we could ever be so foolish as to fall for the climate scam.

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Neil Pryke
October 30, 2025 10:08 pm

In the UK, it might be possible to explain reluctance…Ed Miliband..!

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Neil Pryke
October 31, 2025 5:21 am

Reluctance is the inverse of inductance.

Michael Flynn
October 30, 2025 10:41 pm

Australia’s climate pollution by 6.3 billion tonnes . . .

What in blue blazes is “climate pollution”? Do people willingly pay good money to idiots who toss around such inane terms?

We’re all doomed! Doomed, I tell you!

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Michael Flynn
October 31, 2025 7:59 am

Doing your Peter Lorre impression?

YallaYPoora Kid
October 30, 2025 10:47 pm

Australia’s emissions are around 1% of global emissions.
All global CO2 reduction measures so far have not had any effect on global CO2 in fact it is still slowly rising due to causes which no one can actually pinpoint.
If Australia did hypothetically reduce our 1% to 0.95% or less (costing trillions of dollars and destruction of our ever diminishing industrial economy both ending up in China) it would not make one IOTA of difference to global emissions. It would effectively be a wealth transfer to China without any benefit to Australia.

Iain Reid
Reply to  YallaYPoora Kid
October 31, 2025 12:30 am

Yallapoorakid,

emissions due to burning fossil fuel are a very small proportion of total CO2 emissions. (3 to 5%), it is no wonder that a small reduction of that does not have any effect.
CO2 concentration historically rises with a rise in global temperature and the planet’s population is growing in general may explain why concentration is rising?

Clive Bond
Reply to  YallaYPoora Kid
October 31, 2025 5:02 am

China has more than 1100 coal fired power stations and is opening a new one every two weeks. They love to see us buy their solar panels and windmills made with cheap electricity.

mleskovarsocalrrcom
Reply to  YallaYPoora Kid
October 31, 2025 8:23 am

“…It would effectively be a wealth transfer to China…” That’s the plan!

Reply to  YallaYPoora Kid
October 31, 2025 3:36 pm

Australia’s emissions are around 1% of global emissions.”

Australia’s emissions are around 1% of the man-made 4% of global emissions.

The natural part of the emissions is often not stated but should be more prominent in all mentions of total CO2 emissions

George Kaplan
Reply to  YallaYPoora Kid
November 1, 2025 7:16 pm

It’s worse than that. Australia comprises just over 5% of the Earth’s land. With emissions of roughly 1% that means Australia emitting only about 20% of its fair share.

China is just over 6% of land, yet produces 34% of ‘CO2 pollution’. (Using climate fundamentalist terminology rather than debating plant food terminology). Western Leftists hold that the solution to Chinese pollution is for the West to sacrifice harder, faster, and more. Maybe if the West goes fully Stone Age that’ll offset China’s future total dominance of the means of production? Note that’s the proles go Stone Age since the elites, more specifically the 1%, are responsible for something like 40% of emissions and their lifestyles must not be negatively impacted!!!

The reality is that CO2 output tends to correlate with population density. City states like Singapore, Macao, Bahrain, and Hong Kong have the most extreme outputs – thousands of times higher than the global average, while countries like Australia are many many times less than this average, yet the climate militants obsess over Australia’s relatively minor contribution, and ignore the massive output of ideologically acceptable nations like China, or the aforementioned city states!

altipueri
October 30, 2025 11:36 pm

What’s this : 6.3 billion tonnes of climate pollution ?

altipueri
Reply to  altipueri
October 31, 2025 12:03 am

Incidentally, I am telling lots of people about the Bill Gates epiphany in saying Net Zero is not necessary and there is no climate crisis.
He is much more a public figure than people posting here and he would not have gone and said what he said without having dozens of researchers at his Gates Foundation looking at the data first.

Here is a bit from the UK on Gates: https://dailysceptic.org/2025/10/29/bill-gates-climate-change-is-not-the-end-of-the-world/

HB
Reply to  altipueri
October 31, 2025 12:17 am

might have something to do about a senate inquiry

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  altipueri
October 31, 2025 5:23 am

My understanding is he jumped on the climate liar bandwagon so his beyond meat enterprise could gain traction. When it failed, he changed course. Time will tell what his next venture is and that will expose his real motives.

John Hultquist
Reply to  Sparta Nova 4
October 31, 2025 8:57 am

Ol’Bill has helped fund many dumb ideas, including pumping cold water from depth to the surface to prevent storms or something. Another source says they (13 investors/innovators) intended to pump warm surface water down. (A loop, I think.) This was new in 2009.
Bill Gates to Control Hurricanes: DOH! – Watts Up With That?
{links to images are broken}

Reply to  altipueri
October 31, 2025 9:15 am

It’s about AI. Gates wants all the electricity. Screw the climate catastrophe (so called) Bill wants kilowatts. AI is single handedly destroying climate alarmism (well, Trump helped). The green libs used to be supported by Big Tech, but no more. The switch over is earth shaking.

I wish to congratulate myself and all climate realists for defeating the Climate Blob, but being honest I can’t take the credit. Greed did it. Good old greed. It’s almost a Pyrrhic victory.

Reply to  altipueri
October 31, 2025 10:34 am

He has had no epiphany.

(See my remarks on the latest “Never Mind” post.)

Bruce Cobb
Reply to  altipueri
October 31, 2025 12:08 am

It’s a bunch of BS, that’s what.

Clive Bond
Reply to  altipueri
October 31, 2025 5:05 am

Emissions coming from parliament house.

Reply to  altipueri
October 31, 2025 10:33 am

Maybe that’s how much all the windmills, solar panels, EVs and storage batteries weigh in the aggregate.

rhs
Reply to  altipueri
October 31, 2025 6:54 pm

Insignificant compared to the rest of Earth’s atmosphere which is approximately 5.15times 10^18 kg

October 30, 2025 11:49 pm

Market(s) rule, consumers are not idiots, politicians and their minions are…

The latter can’t neither spell balanced budget nor handle one

Bruce Cobb
October 31, 2025 12:17 am

“We can’t do that! What will the rest of the world think of us?”

Reply to  Bruce Cobb
October 31, 2025 4:36 am

How did Australia get sissified?

Mac
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
October 31, 2025 4:54 am

The Climate Con statements would make a good Monty Python skit. Something like …I told you it would cause devastation, No you didn’t. Yes I did. Just like their argument skit of many years ago.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Mac
October 31, 2025 8:02 am

This is more like the Abuse Dept, next door to the Argument Dept.

Reply to  Mac
October 31, 2025 10:45 am

They were prescient on the gender ideology stuff. “You want to have BABIES?! Were’s the fetus going to gestate, in a shoebox?!”

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
October 31, 2025 5:25 am

Sounds like UK that is, in its political hubris, declaring to be world leaders in dealing with climate change.

Reply to  Sparta Nova 4
October 31, 2025 10:47 am

And the way they mean “climate change,” one would think that “award” should go to some third world country with no running water or electricity.

Reply to  Bruce Cobb
October 31, 2025 10:38 am

That you’re finally awakening from you delusion, I suppose.

October 31, 2025 1:39 am

Just look at the argument.

6.3 billion tonnes more over the next 25 years

So this is, round numbers, 0.25 billion a year. The global emissions total is somewhere around 34 billion tons a year. The piece then goes on to explain the usual rationale for why these kinds of reductions are important:

Abandoning net zero is aligned with global temperature rise well above 3°C. Australia would face a future of relentless disasters and economic upheaval:4 times the number of severe and extreme heatwave days <= even if true, cheaper energy means people can afford to use their air conditioners

  • 1.5 million Australians exposed to coastal flooding by 2050, and 3 million people by 2090. <= build some sea walls
  • Double the number of extreme fire days <= Then improve forest management, to reduce the fire risk. More burnoffs. Cut more fire breaks.
  • Vast regions becoming uninsurable <= Stop building in flood zones, or build some flood defences

Do you see anything missing here? Now you mention it, yes.

What seems to be missing is any reason to think that the reduction proposed will have any effect on either the warming global climate or the predicted disasters. It will not, cannot, because the reduction is less than 1% of the rising total of global emissions.

We get this all the time. Its the starving children in Africa argument. Eat up your dinner because of the starving children in Africa. And how will my getting obese help them? Don’t argue with your mother and eat your dinner!

Maybe China should reduce its 11 or 12 billion tons of emissions a year, that would make quite an impression in the global total?

Shut up and eat your dinner!

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  michel
October 31, 2025 5:26 am

“Mom, I will pay to have my dinner shipped to African children.”

WHAM!

A happy little debunker
October 31, 2025 2:11 am

To truly calculate Net Zero … you must first take gross CO2 emissions and subtract any and all CO2 absorption / mitigation
Luckily the EU’s Geophysical science unit did exactly that back in 2015 and found that Australia was a net carbon sink.
2015 was a hot dry and bushfire ridden year in Australia and their research has literally proved Australia has ALWAYS been a net zero economy.
The lie … the dishonesty … promulgated by the Climate Council and Politicians is that we must exclude natural absorption of CO2 in calculating Net Zero.
EVERYTHING that flows from such lies is wrong.

Bruce Cobb
Reply to  A happy little debunker
October 31, 2025 2:59 am

The whole concept is based on lies so the details make no difference.

Reply to  Bruce Cobb
October 31, 2025 10:49 am

The whole notion that a warmer climate is worse means the whole charade is a farce

October 31, 2025 3:45 am

“That’s equivalent to the annual climate pollution of 3.2 billion Australian cars.”

I’m very impressed that cars outnumber the Australians themselves by orders of magnitude.

October 31, 2025 4:34 am

“climate pollution”

A nonsensical phrase.

“relentless disasters”

WTF? What is that? A disaster than never ends?

Such drivel. 🙂

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
October 31, 2025 8:29 am

When we see a string of 3 or more Cat 5 hurricanes impact the same location in a short time frame, the relentless applies. 1 hurricane is not relentless.

In all of the online dictionaries, relentless definition includes one specific attribute: persistent.
In context, persistent means continuous.

Reply to  Sparta Nova 4
October 31, 2025 10:34 am

Even if we were to see what you describe, that’s no proof of cause.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
October 31, 2025 12:49 pm

Correct, but it fits the definition of “relentless disasters.”

Reply to  Sparta Nova 4
October 31, 2025 3:54 pm

Except- are there relentless disasters? which? where?

October 31, 2025 4:37 am

So Australia thinks that by exporting all of its industries that emit CO2, it’ll help the climate? How did that nation get so stupid?

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
October 31, 2025 5:28 am

The voters believed the campaign lies and voted them in.

“We need change. Trust me!”

Denis
October 31, 2025 5:17 am

“Abandoning net zero is aligned with global temperature rise well above 3°C. Australia would face a future of relentless disasters and economic upheaval…”

Australia is a large country with a small population; about 27 million. This is less 8/100 that of the US and about 2/100 that of China. The CO2 emissions from all three are in rough proportion to the population differences. Even if 1) CO2 is responsible for bad Australian weather and 2) Australia completely stops the emission of CO2 caused by their people and practices, the resulting global CO2 emissions could be reduced by no more than 2/100 globally and locally, far too small to even measure and far too small to have any detectable effect. Whether Australian temperature “rises well above 3C” or not is dependent on the effectiveness of CO2 for increasing temperature, the amount released by many other much larger countries, and whether there are any worsening weather conditions at all caused by increasing temperature. None are evident so far. If Australia wishes to try and have an effect on such changes, the nation would have a much greater chance of an effect if it gave whatever is now being spent in Australia on windmills, solar panels and other such CO2 reducing actions to China or to the US or any other larger and more populous developed nation.

Sparta Nova 4
October 31, 2025 5:20 am

I am still struggling to understand how a statistical average, climate, can be polluted.
The scientific definitions of pollution all include only near term hazards.
How can something we exhale as part of respiration be poison?

Curious minds, what few are left, want to know.

Michael Flynn
Reply to  Sparta Nova 4
October 31, 2025 5:53 am

I am still struggling to understand how a statistical average, climate, can be polluted.

The people spouting such nonsense are suffering from mental aberrations, which prevent them from accepting reality. They may be ignorant and gullible, outright fraudsters, or simply deranged.

Of course, anyone who is persuaded by this sort of pseudoscientific claptrap is even more ignorant and gullible than the purveyors of such.

Quite funny, when you think about it. Lunatics put in charge of the asylum.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Sparta Nova 4
October 31, 2025 8:10 am

How can something we exhale as part of respiration be poison?”

When the goals are:

  • De-industrialization of the West
  • Global control
  • Wealth redistribution

The tools are:

  • Propaganda
  • Fear
  • Coercion
  • Propaganda
Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
October 31, 2025 12:51 pm

Of course.

GeorgeInSanDiego
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
October 31, 2025 9:50 pm

“Our chief weapon is surprise. Surprise and fear. Fear and surprise. Our two weapons are fear and surprise. And ruthless efficiency. Our three weapons are fear, and surprise, and ruthless efficiency.”
(in keeping with the Monty Python references)

John Hultquist
October 31, 2025 8:40 am

climate pollution of 3.2 billion Australian cars.”
Never in the history of writing has there been so much wrong in so few words as with this short statement.
Consider “Australian cars”. The last car built in Australia was a Holden Commodore, which rolled off the assembly line on October 20, 2017.

Mr.
Reply to  John Hultquist
October 31, 2025 5:58 pm

and was promptly stolen.

The Holden Commodore VE MY06_13 is the car model that’s stolen the most in Australia for three consecutive years.

Bob
October 31, 2025 1:03 pm

These people know nothing. Consider this. How many billions of dollars has Australia spent on Net Zero, how much less dependable is Australia’s grid, how much more is Australia paying for their power, their fuel, how many fewer choices does Australia have now because of Net Zero and all for what? Average global CO2 concentration hasn’t gone down one bit, rather it has gone up. Average global temperature hasn’t gone down rather it has gone up. You have wasted Australian time, money and resource all for nothing. You have limited Australian choices all for nothing, you have raised Australian cost of living all for nothing. Australian leadership is either incredibly evil or incredibly stupid, probably both. You are embarrassing your countrymen, stop it.

October 31, 2025 3:33 pm

I have just written to the leader of the Opposition, Sussan Ley, explaining that I will never vote Liberal again until they drop the net zero mania.

Maybe this will be the last straw to move their decision away from net zero

willhaas
November 2, 2025 4:46 pm

It is not a problem because there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on our glabal climate system and the the AGW hyporhesis has been falsified by science. Trillions of dollars have been spent world wide to fight climate change yet no one is saying that ther has been any improvement in our global climate system. So let us stop wasting money trying to fight climate change.