
This election, the story needs to change about what it means to be truly conservative.
In Australia, many political parties claim the conservative badge as they resist change, but true conservatism in 2025 requires action to preserve our world. If we genuinely want to conserve, we have no choice but to change.
Clinging to the status quo under the guise of “preserving traditions” or “economic stability” ignores the reality that the world we know and cherish is being destabilised by climate breakdown, caused by our unwillingness to change our way of living.
The story we tell each other and ourselves needs to change, in particular at election time. For too long, “conservatism” has been wielded as a shield for inaction. This dangerous fallacy – the belief that doing nothing preserves stability and safety – is dismantled daily by the realities of climate disruption.
Climate scientists have been warning us for decades that if we want to avoid societal collapse due to dangerous and destructive heating with droughts, wildfires and ‘once-in-a-generation’ extreme weather events, we must change the way we do business and stop relying on burning of fossil fuels for our energy and electricity consumption.
So to be truly conservative in the modern sense is to embrace the changes necessary to protect the environment, our communities, and future generations.
This is not a matter of opinion but of practical reality. Insurance companies, with their vast troves of actuarial data, understand this better than anyone. They are already pricing the risks associated with climate change. For example, the California wildfires in recent months have incurred economic losses ranging from $135 billion to $275 billion. These numbers reflect not just destroyed property but the cascading impact on livelihoods, ecosystems, and public health.
“We have to change to preserve”
Christina Ihler Madsen, a communications manager from Denmark, puts it like this:
“The choice is not between maintaining the status quo or going fossil free. The choice is between going fossil free so we can preserve as much as possible of everything we love – or clinging to ‘business as usual’ and watching the foundation of everything we love crumble before our eyes. We have to ‘change to preserve’.”
~ Christina Ihler Madsen
This logic echoes the warnings issued decades ago by a conservative figure many today might find surprising: Margaret Thatcher.
Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) was the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990 and the leader of the Conservative Party. She was known as the “Iron Lady” for her strong-willed and uncompromising leadership style. In her speeches to the British Royal Society in 1988 and the UN General Assembly in 1989, she stated that with the use of fossil fuels “we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself”.
“Mankind and his activities that are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways. The result is that change in future is likely to be more fundamental and more widespread than anything we have known hitherto. The environmental challenge that confronts the whole world demands an equivalent response from the whole world. Every country will be affected and no one can opt out.”
~ Margaret Thatcher, leader of the UK’s Conservative Party, in 1989
Who benefits from inaction?
Margaret Thatcher’s ‘conservative words’ remain profoundly relevant. She understood that environmental challenges transcend borders and ideologies – they demand a collective, coordinated response. This is not merely an ethical imperative. Failure to act causes irreparable damage to ecosystems, food security, and global stability – threats that no nation can escape.
It is crucial to recognise that the resistance to change often comes from those with vested interests in the current energy system. The rich and powerful – those profiting from fossil fuels and environmental exploitation – have little incentive to prioritise stability or long-term prosperity. In fact, they frequently benefit from instability, which enables them to exploit resources and amass wealth unchecked by meaningful regulation.
A conservative approach to governance, in its truest form, would reject such short-sighted profiteering. It would prioritise sustainability, equity, and resilience. This requires courage and leadership from individuals who refuse to be corrupted by money or deceived by promises of short-term gain.
The cost of delay
Every day of inaction compounds the cost of the climate crisis. The impacts are no longer distant or abstract – they are here now: Floods, droughts, bushfires, extreme weather events. We see it on the news every single night. ‘Unnatural disasters’ are reshaping lives and economies around the world.
According to estimates, the cost of extreme weather events globally in 2024 exceeded $300 billion. This includes record-breaking wildfires in Canada, which scorched over 17 million hectares of land and caused an estimated $15 billion in damages there, as well as the devastating floods in Libya, which took thousands of lives and caused damages exceeding $10 billion. The economic toll of Hurricane Otis, which struck Acapulco, Mexico, was estimated at $15 billion alone.
The wildfires in California remain a grim example of the mounting costs. The damages and economic losses include not only the destruction of homes and infrastructure but also the long-term economic disruptions to agriculture, tourism, and local businesses. Insurance premiums in high-risk areas have skyrocketed, leaving many unable to afford coverage. And as a result, insurance premiums are predicted to rise not only in the United States, but all over the western world.
Ordinary citizens bear these costs – through higher insurance premiums, taxes for disaster relief, and the personal toll of displacement. The fossil fuel companies on the other hand continue to post record profits. In 2024 alone, the largest oil and gas companies reported combined revenues exceeding $4 trillion, ($4,000 billion – or four million million) – a stark contrast to the financial and emotional devastation experienced by communities worldwide.
This is a profound moral failing. A failure of governance. This disparity raises one important question: how long will the public continue finding it acceptable to pay the price of climate disasters while fossil fuel shareholders and executives rake in unprecedented profits?
As long as the truth about who pays and who profits remains buried, this injustice will persist. The failure of governance could be highlighted by journalists every single time a new climate disaster breaks loose, however it remains untold in mainstream media and it is not part of any public or political narrative. Without transparency and accountability in politics, the cycle of exploitation and environmental destruction continues unchecked.
A conservative shift
To safeguard our present world and to honour our responsibility to those generations who come after us, we must rethink what it means to conserve, because in today’s world, to conserve requires urgent and deep structural changes in our society.
This is the most important and urgent task of our time, which voters who identify as ‘conservatives’ need to consider.
Conservatism no longer means preserving the structures of the past but preserving the very conditions that allow life to flourish. If we are to protect the world we cherish, and to honour our duty to future generations, we must act now. Our safety and prosperity depends on the decisions we make collectively – which in particular becomes relevant when we decide who we will vote for at the next election.
The climate crisis calls for a robust discussion with so-called conservative politicians about what it requires to be a truly conservative politician of our time. If you are a member of or affiliated with a conservative party, it is a question you could consider asking your local representative or candidate:
“According to what you perceive as your conservative values, do you agree that in order to preserve, protect and keep stability in our world, we now urgently need to change our ways?”
True conservatism demands courage – the courage to adapt, act, and protect. The choices we make today will determine the legacy we leave for our children, their children and the generations of the future. It is time to redefine what it means to conserve.

Further reading:
- Margaret Thatcher: an unlikely green hero? (The Guardian, 9 April 2013): “The former prime minister helped put climate change, acid rain and pollution onto the mainstream political map.” Read more
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
~ Charles Darwin