Bernard Keane: ”The Greens, meanwhile, have demonstrated there’s at least one party taking the climate emergency seriously, unveiling a policy to end coal-fired power by 2030 and ban coal exports by then, ending new fossil fuel projects, and guaranteeing jobs for workers affected by decarbonisation. Oddly enough, the Greens’ plan is the closest we’ve seen from a prominent party to the plan put forward by the international lobby group for fossil fuels, the International Energy Agency, to reach genuine net zero (i.e. nothing like Morrison’s farcical ‘net zero by magic’ policy) by 2050, which includes phasing out unabated coal emissions in developed countries by 2030. It’s a demonstration of the extraordinary extent of state capture in Australia that the major parties being profoundly outside the global consensus on the need for urgent climate action attracts little if any media scrutiny. Though, of course, much of the media is itself an arm of the fossil fuel industry, so don’t expect to hear much about the Greens’ plan.”
28 April 2022