The Great Unravelling

As the world loses faith in Net Zero, Australia clings to the creed.

There was a saying in the Australian Catholic Church in the ’70s: “The further you get from Rome, the more orthodox you become.” The idea being that Italians were much more relaxed about the practice of their faith than Catholics on the other side of the globe.

So it goes with our climate politics. Here, aiming for Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050 is treated as holy writ by politicians, activists, climate carpetbaggers, and most of the legacy media.

Things are different abroad, as much of the rest of the world walks away from the target, if not in words, then in deeds.

One of the more interesting developments is that even some of those convinced that global warming poses catastrophic risks are now admitting that Net Zero is unreachable, and are calling for a reset.

Here are some recent, and not so recent, useful reads that underline why inconvenient facts are burying fantasy targets.

1. Penny Wong – Climate Reality Dawns

Source: Foreign Minister transcript 20 May, 2025

It appears that distance from our shores helps clarify the thinking of our politicians.

In Canberra, Labor, the Greens and independents all parrot the line that deep cuts to Australia’s carbon emissions are essential to saving the Barrier Reef, averting floods and bushfires, turning back the tide—or (insert your preferred catastrophe here).

But on a diplomatic tour through the Pacific, Foreign Minister Penny Wong offered a rare moment of candour. When pressed by journalists about pursuing even more extreme emissions targets than those Labor has already signed up to, Wong pointed the finger at Beijing:

“China is the world’s largest emitter. Its actions will determine whether we can achieve our target.”

It’s a truth Labor rarely dares to say: Australia’s one percent contribution to global carbon emissions is trivial. If China—which burns 58 percent of the world’s coal—doesn’t act, nothing Canberra does amounts to a hill of beans. And Beijing has no intention of weakening itself to meet a fanciful target. Neither do the United States, India, or Russia. That makes Net Zero effectively a dead letter. If this fact ever took root in Australia’s political debate, public enthusiasm for spending billions on a futile crusade would evaporate.

Pacific Island leaders routinely castigate Australia over its emissions and energy exports, while staying mute about the enormous gap between what Beijing says and what it does.

Labor made a rod for its own back by trumpeting the line that the Coalition was determined to literally sink Pacific Islands because it wasn’t sufficiently committed to economy-destroying restraints on energy exports and dispatchable electricity generation.

Wong defended Australia’s record as “substantial,” noting that Labor has approved more renewable projects than ever and pledged to cut emissions by 43 percent by 2030.

But the logical end of Net Zero is the end of coal and liquefied natural gas exports—something that would condemn Australia, and the Pacific, to poverty. The journalists questioning Wong can see where this road leads. One asked:

“Can we expect the Labor Government to now look at reducing expansion in coal mines?”

Wong didn’t even attempt to answer the question. But she can expect to hear it again.

With Australia bidding to co-host the 2026 UN climate summit with the Pacific, there will be a rising chorus of demands that we wear some kind of hair shirt to demonstrate we are worthy of hosting the Olympics of virtue signalling.

I do hope it comes here. Australians need to see the world’s climate brahmins and green grifters fly their private jets into Adelaide to promote energy rationing for the poor. Apparently, all it takes to save the planet is “more ambition.” And theirs is limitless, so long as they don’t pay the price and the taxpayer picks up the tab.

In an addendum to this story, as Wong flew out of Fiji, Beijing’s foreign ministry announced that leaders and diplomats from 11 Pacific Island nations would attend talks in the eastern Chinese city of Xiamen. Don’t expect to see stories about Pacific statesmen taking on China over its carbon footprint in the wake of this gathering.

Check. Mate.

2. Kathryn Porter – The True Cost of Net Zero

Source: Watt-Logic, May 2025

Kathryn Porter’s deep-dive into the burden of weather-dependent generation pulls no punches: the UK’s drive to reach Net Zero is costing consumers and industry £17 billion a year in levies, a figure set to exceed £20 billion by 2030.

Porter dismantles the “cheap green energy” myth by showing that wind and solar demand massive back-up from gas plants, batteries, and interconnectors. On top of this, subsidies, grid fees, and curtailment payments add more than 50 percent to wholesale costs.

This has pushed British industrial electricity costs to the highest in the developed world, and household costs to the fourth highest.

Then there is the insanity of wind farms being deliberately built behind grid constraints, even though much of the electricity produced cannot be used.

“In 2024, the Seagreen wind farm, which opened in October 2023, was constrained off (i.e. paid not to export its electricity to the grid) twice as often as it actually sold its electricity to the grid. When this happens, consumers must pay a gas power station to generate the electricity they actually use, and pay wind farms not to generate the same amount of electricity.”

Even the UK’s Climate Change Committee admits that savings from Net Zero won’t materialise until the 2040s, and only under wildly optimistic assumptions.

3. Tony Blair Institute – The Climate Paradox

Source: Tony Blair Institute – 29 April 2025

Lindy Fursman’s report caused quite a stir when it dropped, mostly because she is the Director of Climate and Energy Policy at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.

That gave the imprimatur of the former British Labour Prime Minister to what amounts to Net Zero heresy.

Fursman simply lists the facts: despite rapid growth in renewables and electric vehicles, global fossil fuel production and demand continue to rise, and will keep rising—driven largely by China, India, and the developing world’s need for steel, cement, transport, and energy.

“These are the inconvenient facts, which mean that any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail.”

She is keen to make it clear this is not an argument for inaction.

“None of this invalidates the inconvenient truth that the climate is changing, and to our detriment – or that this is one of the fundamental challenges of our time.”

But Fursman argues that the current suite of policies have backfired, alienating voters who see sacrifice without effect. She calls for a pragmatic reset: policy should focus on commercially viable innovations such as carbon capture, advanced nuclear, and AI-driven efficiency, rather than moralistic bans.

The report drew fire from the British Labour Government, and Downing Street leaned on the Blair Institute to issue a statement affirming that it still believed the government’s Net Zero policy was “the right one.” But no amount of spin will change the truth.

4. Varun Sivaram – It’s Time for Climate Realism

Source: Council on Foreign Relations – 7 April 2025

Dr Varun Sivaram is a physicist who served in the Biden Administration as Managing Director for Clean Energy and Innovation under Secretary John Kerry, the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. So he worked hand in glove with one of the great climate moralisers of our era.

Sivaram is now a director at the Council on Foreign Relations’ Climate Realism Initiative. In his essay explaining what that means, he begins by debunking what he describes as four myths. The first is this:

“The world’s climate targets are achievable. They are not. The 2015 Paris Agreement’s internationally agreed target of limiting the global average temperature rise to “well below” 2°C (3.6°F) by century’s end will almost certainly be breached, as global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. Similarly, the goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 is utterly implausible. The world is likely on track to warm by 3°C (5.4°F) or more this century.”

The second myth should send an even bigger shudder through policymakers in Australia.

Reducing U.S. domestic greenhouse gas emissions can make a meaningful difference. U.S. emissions will be largely irrelevant to global climate change. The trajectory of global warming in the 21st century will be shaped by cumulative emissions between 2025 and 2100. By that measure, the United States is on track to account for around 5 percent of global future cumulative emissions. China, along with emerging and non-advanced economies such as India, Indonesia, Brazil, and South Africa, will account for more than 85 percent. Slowing climate change will depend principally on reducing emissions outside U.S. borders.

If US emissions are trivial then Australia’s a inconsequential.

None of this means that Sivaram is any less alarmed about climate change. He warns that thinking it poses only a manageable risk to U.S. economic and national security is dangerously complacent, as the tail risks of runaway warming are potentially catastrophic. At the same time, assuming the clean energy transition will automatically benefit U.S. interests is equally naive. Unless the United States builds globally competitive clean-tech industries, the shift to renewables could undermine American energy dominance and empower China, which already leads in solar, wind, batteries, and electric vehicles.

Sivaram argues that the U.S. must prepare for a world that dramatically overshoots its climate targets, invest in competitive clean technology industries, and lead international efforts to avert what he believes could be catastrophic climate change.

The CFR’s podcast The President’s Inbox is always worth a listen and here is James Lindsay in conversation with Varun Sivaram.

5. Sir Dieter Helm– The Case for a Climate Reset

Source: Dieter Helm, 3 December 2024

In this essay, Oxford economist Sir Dieter Helm delivers a sweeping indictment of global climate policy, arguing that the Net Zero consensus is breaking down because it is built on illusion.

Helm contrasts the ritual of yearly climate summits with the unbroken rise of carbon emissions and the stubborn 80 percent share of global energy still held by fossil fuels. He exposes the core deceit: Net Zero targets are based on territorial emissions rather than consumption, allowing rich nations to offshore their carbon footprint—turning climate policy into a world-wide accounting shell game.

“Hence the great ‘successes’ claimed by the UK and the EU in reducing their emissions, whilst switching from home production of energy-intensive goods to imports. Closing Port Talbot and the Grangemouth refinery in the UK are the latest two assets in a long line of de-industrialisation, probably with much of the car industry following. In the UK’s case, carbon consumption (even when only partially measured) is much higher than its carbon production.”

He, among a long list of others, underlines the fact that there is no energy transition.

“Oil output is over 100 million barrels a day, coal is maintaining its markets, and gas is booming. Just as there was no transition from wood to coal, or from coal to oil, there is no transition from coal, oil and gas to renewables, even in electricity.”

One transition is all too real: from low to high cost electricity. Helm demolishes the claim that weather-dependent generation is cheaper than other sources of energy.

“The system costs of renewables are what matters. As more and more are added to the electricity system, they require not just a very large and costly rebuilding of the grid, but also more and more back-up generation for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. This is not controversial: it is well-known but widely simply ignored.”

The results of this wilful political blindness have also been well documented: soaring UK and European electricity prices, collapsing domestic industry, and energy dependence on China.

“It is ironic that one of the major beneficiaries of (Germany’s) Energiewende has been China solar, and this Chinese success is based upon cheap energy. The irony is reinforced by the fact that the main cheaper energy to support China’s 80% market share of solar panels is coal.”

Helm calls for a climate reset: abandon unachievable short-term targets, use nuclear as a source of firm low-carbon power, and shift to carbon consumption-based accounting enforced by carbon border taxes. He warns that current strategies risk the worst of all worlds—higher costs, lost competitiveness, and no meaningful emissions cut.

His message is clear: without honesty about costs, capabilities, and geopolitical realities, the West will continue to deindustrialise while global emissions rise.

Here is a podcast with the author.

6. GreenCollar – Carbon Market Exit

Source: The Australian, May 2025 (paywalled) GreenCollar Press Release

Australia’s largest carbon market investor, GreenCollar, has pulled out of the federal government’s carbon offset program, accusing activists of hijacking it in an ideological war against fossil fuels.

The company, which manages more than 300 carbon projects across three million hectares of land, announced it would no longer seek certification under the Climate Active scheme, citing relentless activist-driven reputational damage.

“Climate Active has been attacked and attacked and attacked. Here is our best opportunity to actually change things around, and we’re blowing it up,” GreenCollar co-founder James Schultz told The Australian.

GreenCollar said in a statement that it would continue to measure and offset its emissions internally, but could no longer participate in a system that had become politically toxic.

“Why people are leaving is that there’s no benefit to participating anymore. If all that you get is a court case from some not-for-profit that’s being funded to attack the fossil fuel industry … you’re not going to participate.”

GreenCollar insists offsets are not a get-out-of-jail-free card, because there are nowhere near enough credits available to allow fossil fuel producers to avoid decarbonisation. The company warned that demonising offsets jeopardises the broader climate and conservation mission by undermining investment in land-sector solutions.

“From our point of view, the reason these markets were put in place was to drive large-scale finance back into the land sector, where we need trillions of dollars of investment. And this is entirely absent from any discussion in Australia at the moment. And it’s … very, very disappointing.”

GreenCollar’s departure comes as more than 100 companies have exited Climate Active, casting a long shadow over Labor’s Net Zero strategy. The government says reforms are underway, but industry insiders say time is running out to restore confidence.

Schultz put it bluntly:

“This is one of the biggest own goals of the green movement ever.”

7. South Africa – Coal is a Critical Mineral.

Sources: Energy Capital & Power, February 2025, AlCircle, February 2025

In February, South Africa officially designated coal as a critical mineral, marking a significant statement of intent amid growing global pressure to phase out fossil fuels. The announcement came from Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe at the Investing in African Mining Indaba in Cape Town.

“For us, coal is a critical mineral because it generates substantial revenue,” Mantashe said. “The coal sector remains highly attractive for new and expanded investments.”

Coal currently supplies around 72 percent of South Africa’s primary energy—and the government forecasts that won’t change over the next decade. Its designation as a critical mineral effectively locks in coal’s role in South Africa’s economy, employment base, and energy security strategy, even as the country receives international funding to transition away from fossil fuels under the Just Energy Transition Partnership.

The Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) is a collaborative initiative launched at the 2021 COP26 climate summit, where South Africa partnered with the International Partners Group (IPG)—of the European Union, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States—to support South Africa's transition from coal-dependent energy to a low-carbon economy. The IPG committed US$8.5 billion over five years to assist in this transition. It is estimated that the full cost of this project is in the order of US$99 billion.

The move has drawn predictable responses. Critics argue that it undermines South Africa’s commitments to reduce emissions, while supporters see it as a necessary affirmation of national energy sovereignty and economic realism. Either way, it reflects a broader global trend: green dreams are foundering on the rocks of reality. Affordability, security and stability will trump targets. But poor countries will still take any cash on offer from gullible Western politicians. Who can blame them?

This decision puts South Africa on a collision course with Net Zero advocates—and illustrates how deeply embedded coal remains in the developing world’s economic survival.

8. Vaclav Smil – How the World Really Works

Source: Time Magazine, 17 May 2022

An oldie but a goodie.

If there’s one book on energy every policymaker and journalist should read, it’s Vaclav Smil’s How the World Really Works. For those short on time, Smil’s Time magazine summary is an essential primer on the brutal material reality of modernity.

Smil’s central point is simple: the world can’t function without the four pillars of modern civilisation—cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia. All have fossil fuels embedded in their industrial production.

“These four materials, so unlike in their properties and qualities, share three common traits: they are not readily replaceable by other materials (certainly not in the near future or on a global scale); we will need much more of them in the future; and their mass-scale production depends heavily on the combustion of fossil fuels, making them major sources of greenhouse gas emissions.”

Of the four, Smil puts ammonia at the top of the list because:

“… its synthesis is the basis of all nitrogen fertilizers, and without their applications it would be impossible to feed, at current levels, nearly half of today’s nearly 8 billion people.”

Smil doesn’t oppose decarbonisation, but he demands honesty about timeframes, trade-offs, and the sheer scale of what’s required.

“Until all energies used to extract and process these materials come from renewable conversions, modern civilization will remain fundamentally dependent on the fossil fuels used in the production of these indispensable materials. No artificial intelligence designs, no apps, no claims of coming ‘dematerialization’ will change that.”

But, almost alone in the world, Australia’s political class is determined to try and prove that politics can trump physics. A long, expensive and painful road lies ahead. The inconvenient facts will prevail, but not before enormous damage is done.