Fossil fuel interests have politicised climate action and slowed the transition. A trusted, science-led expert group could help galvanise public demand for change.
Temperature records continue to be broken, and governments continue to approve new fossil fuel projects. Politicians are failing the people; it’s time for change. We need to take the politics out of the debate and get the people to demand that governments take action to minimise the climate threat. For this to happen will first require a major communications campaign.
Politicisation of climate change has become a major impediment to the world successfully addressing the climate crisis. To address this, I propose the formation of an apolitical science-based expert group to obtain community support for calls on the Australian government to align its climate and energy policies with the science. To succeed in getting effective climate action, this strategy would have to be replicated in other countries. The Australian expert group could engage globally and aim to evolve into an international organisation.
With close to 90 per cent of global greenhouse gases coming from the extraction, processing, transportation and burning of fossil fuels, the only hope to avoid a climate catastrophe is to rapidly phase out these fuels.
But there still is major support for fossil fuels. A Banking on Climate Chaos report, published in June this year, reported that the world’s largest banks pledged $906 billion to fossil fuel companies in 2025, an increase of $64 billion from 2024. This financial information adds significantly to the already strong evidence that renewable energy is not replacing fossil fuels, it is supplementing them.
Some people are making the extraordinary claim that action to address climate change is too costly. How much is too much to address an existential threat to life on Earth?
A 2025 joint report by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and the University of Exeter projects a 50 per cent contraction in global GDP between 2070 and 2090 if unchecked climate change triggers severe ecological tipping points and natural systems collapse. The cost of unmitigated climate change is much greater than the cost of decarbonising the global economy.
Why then, when there is an existential threat, is there minimal action to address the threat? Because the emergency is primarily a fossil-fuel emergency.
The fossil fuel industry and its support groups are enormously powerful and have access to almost unlimited finance. This enables them to significantly influence government policy. The industry has close working relationships with many governments.
The Australian government is appeasing the fossil fuel industry with its future gas strategy, with gas seen as a bridging or transition fuel. This strategy is based on a fallacy: when all emissions are taken into account, LNG (liquified natural gas) is close to being as polluting as coal. Some studies have calculated that, when emissions related to the export of the fuel are factored in, exported LNG is more polluting than coal.
Climate change should never have been politicised. It isn’t an ideological issue. It is about minimising the threat from the heating planet, by accepting and acting on expert advice.
There now is a situation in Australia and many other countries where right-wing political parties are refusing to support action to address climate change and increasingly are denying the science. There are no sensible reasons for people who are politically right leaning not to support strong climate action.
In many countries, though, action on climate change depends on which side of politics is in power. While few people base their vote on the need for climate action, that action depends on election outcomes. For example, Colombia had been a leading nation combating the climate crisis, but this will change because a right-wing party that supports fossil fuels has just won the national election. This is why we need to depoliticise the climate change discussion.
I am proposing a course of action aimed at obtaining community support for Australia to play a leading role in advocating globally for the equitable, just transition from fossil fuels to clean energy.
My article in Pearls and Irritations explains the need for the proposed expert group, including its composition, leadership requirements and objectives.
The group’s first task would be a major communications campaign to present the community with the evidence about the climate crisis. People have been denied by politicians the facts about fossil fuels and are being fed disinformation by the fossil fuel lobby. This false information is being further promoted by the predominately right-wing media.
The group could combat the well-funded far-right anti-science movement that is gaining traction globally, including in Australia, supported by the anti-science Trump administration.
The expert group would have to be capable of making the climate crisis a major national conversation that convinces the community it is in their interests to act. To do this, it would aim to become Australia’s leading authority on climate and energy policies, with the expertise to make apolitical assessments of policies put forward by political parties.
This initiative should not be seen as an attack on the Albanese government, but rather as a way for it to obtain community support to align its climate and energy policies with the science, without being damaged politically.
There are several organisations in Australia that could work together to form the expert group, including the Climate Council, The Australia Institute, the Australian Conversation Foundation, Greenpeace Australia and GetUp. A united voice on the evidence about climate change would be compatible with each of their missions.
I am proposing a course of action to address a disastrous situation where politicians put their political interests ahead of good policy. Establishing this expert group and galvanising the community will be challenging, but it could bring about a breakthrough in the fight against fossil fuel interests and complicit governments.
Ken Russell
Ken Russell spent his working life in the Electricity Supply Industry, initially in England, and subsequently in Queensland, responsible for the supply and spare parts management of large coal-fired power stations. He has been a long-time advocate for rapid climate action.