“True, Australia is ‘not reducing fast enough to achieve NSW’s legislated targets of a 50% reduction by 2030 or a 70% reduction by 2035.’ That calls for loosing or ending the unrealistic targets, which is now the climate policy for most industrial economies.”
Rob Grant, a self-described “energy transition leader” based in Perth, Western Australia, recently expressed the concern of the climate alarm community: that adaptation is the way forward, with traditional mitigation yielding. “Australia is quietly settling into a climate strategy of adaptation over abatement,” he begins, “and the temperature data says that is a bet we will lose.”
Last week’s Labor conference set no new aspiration on climate. Our Paris commitment stays the central plank, and if you assume we deliver on it, the comfortable read is “this is all Australia needs and can do.” It might suit the current political environment of what’s possible during the focus on the economy over climate (a la during the GFC), but unsurprisingly I don’t agree, and nor, does the draft ALP national platform. It now carries a dedicated subsection, “Adapting to climate risk” (clauses 14 to 18), followed by “Emergency management: Building a more resilient nation” (clauses 19 to 21). Read together, they tell you where the Government’s head is: managing the consequences of warming rather than leading on the cause.
This makes sense, politically and otherwise. Australia has hurt its economy for no appreciable effect on climate. But the nation has a strong Climate Industrial Complex filling the pristine with industrial wind and solar and batteries. Here-and-now matters, not a hypothetical climate many years, many decades, hence. But Grant disagrees with his concern–based on recent observations–that recent warming is bad and out of control.
That matters because the science keeps running ahead of the models. On current trajectories we are likely to breach 1.5°C in the early 2030s, and the recent analysis from Zeke Hausfather (The Strongest El Nino Ever) sharpens the near-term picture. Global temperature lags the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) index by three to five months, so most of the current event’s warming lands in 2027….
But if trends change, that will be from natural causes despite anthropogenic influences.
Here is the problem. Faced with that trajectory, we appear to be strapping in for a “more solar powering more air conditioners” and wider insurance availability policy environment, rather than more abatement beyond what is already economic….
Grant supports adaptation through the back door.
Adaptation is necessary and I am not arguing against it. But adaptation without abatement is treating the symptom while quietly funding the disease. Every fraction of a degree we decline to prevent is one we pay to endure later – in hardened infrastructure, in insurance premiums, in lost productivity and most worringly in lives and properties lost to climate disasters.
But mitigation increasing energy prices and slowing industry works against adaptation. It is not a plus-plus but a minus-minus. But Grant wants to keep going down the all pain-no gain road to serfdom.
So the uncomfortable question is not whether we meet Paris. It is whether meeting Paris, as currently framed, is remotely enough. On the numbers and staring down this super El Nino, it is not. Yet more mitigation is needed in Australia to achieve its goal….
True, Australia is “not reducing fast enough to achieve NSW’s legislated targets of a 50% reduction by 2030 or a 70% reduction by 2035.” That calls for loosing or ending the unrealistic targets, which is now the climate policy for most industrial economies. Bad policy should be ended, not continued, with a winner being Australia’s living space with less wind and solar takeover.
APPENDIX: Adaptation Posts
Global Air Conditioning: Adaptation in Action (July 21, 2026)
Adaptation: Think About It (July 2, 2026)
The Argument for Adaptation and Resilience (July 14, 2025)
Examples of Adaptation and Resilience (July 15, 2025)
Climate Adaptation vs. Mitigation Fail (June 12, 2025)
“Resilience and Adaptation”: Mitigation Demotion Ahead? (October 9, 2024)
Adaptation to Heat: Then and Now (May 3, 2024)