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The Sustainable Hour no. 570 | Transcript | Podcast notes
This week The Sustainable Hour turns 12. We celebrate with a very special guest: former fossil fuel executive turned climate truth-teller, Ian Dunlop.
Ian warns that Australia is positioning itself on the wrong side of history while climate impacts accelerate far faster than official reports acknowledge. Temperatures are already breaching 1.5°C, with 2°C looming within the next decade. Massive shifts in habitability, food security and global stability are now unavoidable unless governments embrace emergency-level action.
Our global news correspondent Colin Mockett OAM brings stories that show the stark divergence in the world’s energy future: the US doubling down on fossil fuel exports while China leads the clean technology race – and sells more electric cars domestically than the US sells of all cars combined.
. . .
Ian Dunlop spent his early career exploring for oil and gas in many parts the world, then running coal companies in Australia, chairing the Australian Coal Association in the late 1980s. Changing direction, he became a climate activist, since playing many roles encouraging political and business leaders to seriously address climate change, most recently via the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration and the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group.
Ian explains why current targets like “net zero by 2050” are political illusions that delay real solutions. He argues that Australia must immediately:
• stop subsidising coal, oil and gas
• end approvals for new fossil projects
• redirect defence and mega-spending toward climate survival
• prepare serious adaptation plans for catastrophic scenarios
For Ian, climate action is personal. After decades inside Shell and the coal sector, he changed direction when he realised the industry was steering the world into collapse. He now works with the Club of Rome and security leaders to push for truth-based policy that protects human civilisation itself.
We ask: how should citizens respond when leaders fail?
Ian’s answer: Be honest. Be active. Think broadly. Persevere. Leaders follow public pressure, and we need to apply it like never before.
We also reflect on The Sustainable Hour’s own 570 episodes – a decade of broadcasting solutions and hope while refusing to look away from the danger. With the world on the brink, we reaffirm our mission through our 12 years of broadcasting and podcasting: to find the courage to be the difference.
Original music featured in the episode:
• Time to Wake Up – a tribute to American Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s truth-telling on climate corruption
• How Many More Must Die? – inspired by the young climate activists who carry the grief of disaster into action
You can find the songs here.
“This is going to fundamentally alter the way that humanity have to operate. What we’re going to see is that large parts of the world become uninhabitable at 2 or 2.5 degrees Celsius. That’s going to mean the movement of large numbers of people, possibly up to half a billion people, maybe a billion, as it goes on toward 3 degrees Celsius. It means fundamental things like the yields from crops fall off dramatically in parts of the world, the rice crops and so on in Asia…”
~ Ian Dunlop, former Shell executive, current Club of Rome member
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We at The Sustainable Hour would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting, the Wadawurrung People. We pay our respects to their elders – past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all First Nations people.
The traditional custodians lived in harmony with the land for millennia, nurturing it and thriving in often harsh conditions. Their connection to the land was deeply spiritual and sustainable. This land was invaded and stolen from them. It was never ceded. Today, it is increasingly clear that if we are to survive the climate emergency we face, we must learn from their land management practices and cultural wisdom.
True climate justice cannot be achieved until Australia’s First Nations people receive the justice they deserve. When we speak about the future, we must include respect for those yet to be born, the generations to come. As the old saying reminds us: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” It is deeply unfair that decisions to ignore the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t live to face the worst impacts, leaving future generations to bear the burden of their inaction.
“The Indigenous worldview has been marginalised for generations because it was seen as antiquated and unscientific and its ethics of respect for Mother Earth were in conflict with the industrial worldview. But now, in this time of climate change and massive loss of biodiversity, we understand that the Indigenous worldview is neither unscientific nor antiquated, but is, in fact, a source of wisdom that we urgently need.”
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, weallcanada.org
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EMBRACE GENUINE EMERGENCY ACTION
By Ian Dunlop
September 2025 saw the release of several hundred pages of analysis and policy on the greatest threat facing Australia, namely climate change. The National Climate Risk Assessment, the National Adaptation Plan and the 2035 emission reduction targets are long-overdue, important initiatives, professionally developed.
Unfortunately, as so often with official climate reporting, the real message is buried in the verbiage. The climate risks and dangers now faced by humanity are far greater than the politically-acceptable summaries suggest. Mitigation and adaptation commitments are woefully inadequate, as virtually nothing has been achieved in terms of the key necessity – emissions reduction – since serious negotiations began three decades ago, with atmospheric carbon concentrations continuing to rise to record levels. There is no sign this is about to change.
As a result, we face an existential threat to our survival, which has been locked-in over many years by leadership failure and inaction. Meanwhile, our leaders continue as if this is just another item on the political and business agenda, refusing to face reality. And climate is only one amongst a number of existential threats created by our unsustainable economic system, albeit, apart from nuclear war, it is arguably the most immediate and dangerous.
Decades of inaction now mean that the climate solution must embrace genuine emergency action, as in wartime, with leadership to match. In particular, we have to reassess our values – what is really important, what must we retain and defend, what has to be abandoned?
This must be a whole-of-nation reassessment, encompassing the economy, defence, health, indigenous and social issues, and much more, not constrained to climate and environmental specifics.
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The brutal truth about climate – featuring David Suzuki
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“The climate emergency is the biggest threat to life on our planet.”
~ Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London
A planet on the brink
The annual “State of the Climate” report, led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Oregon State University, highlights:
- The year 2024 set a new mean global surface temperature record, signaling an escalation of climate upheaval.
- Currently, 22 of 34 planetary vital signs are at record levels.
- Warming may be accelerating, likely driven by reduced aerosol cooling, strong cloud feedbacks, and a darkening planet.
- The human enterprise is driving ecological overshoot. Population, livestock, meat consumption, and gross domestic product are all at record highs, with an additional approximately 1.3 million humans and 0.5 million ruminants added weekly.
- In 2024, fossil fuel energy consumption hit a record high, with coal, oil, and gas all at peak levels. Combined solar and wind consumption also set a new record but was 31 times lower than fossil fuel energy consumption.
- So far, in 2025, atmospheric carbon dioxide is at a record level, likely worsened by a sudden drop in land carbon uptake partly due to El Niño and intense forest fires.
- Global fire-related tree cover loss reached an all-time high, with fires in tropical primary forest up 370% over 2023, fueling rising emissions and biodiversity loss.
- Ocean heat content reached a record high, contributing to the largest coral bleaching event ever recorded, affecting 84% of reef area.
- So far, in 2025, Greenland and Antarctic ice mass are at record lows. The Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets may be passing tipping points, potentially committing the planet to meters of sea-level rise.
- Deadly and costly disasters surged, with Texas flooding killing at least 135 people, the California wildfires alone exceeding US$250 billion in damages, and climate-linked disasters since 2000 globally reaching more than US$18 trillion.
- Climate change is endangering thousands of wild animal species; more than 3500 species are now at risk and there is new evidence of climate-related animal population collapses.
- The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation is weakening, threatening major climate disruptions.
- Climate change is already affecting water quality and availability, undermining agricultural productivity, sustainable water management, and increasing the risk of water-related conflict.
- A dangerous hothouse Earth trajectory may now be more likely due to accelerated warming, self-reinforcing feedbacks, and tipping points.
- Climate change mitigation strategies are available, cost effective, and urgently needed. From forest protection and renewables to plant-rich diets, we can still limit warming if we act boldly and quickly.
- Social tipping points can drive rapid change. Even small, sustained nonviolent movements can shift public norms and policy, highlighting a vital path forward amid political gridlock and ecological crisis.
- There is a need for systems change that links individual technical approaches with broader societal transformation, governance, policies, and social movements.
"Fossil fuel companies, in order to maintain their garish profits—& Big Oil executives, in order to buy their 4th homes & private jets &, increasingly, luxury bunkers—knowingly stole humanity’s best chance to address climate change on a timeline that would have averted apocalypse."
— Dr. Aaron Thierry (@thierryaaron.bsky.social) November 5, 2025 at 11:46 AM
[image or embed]
MEANWHILE, IN AUSTRALIA…
“There are growing concerns that the increasingly violent language could turn to actual attacks against landholders who host renewable energy infrastructure…”
→ ABC News – 31 October 2025:
Dangerous anti-renewables rhetoric, bullying and intimidation creates growing chasm in rural communities
“Hostility towards farmers hosting renewable energy projects is increasing, fracturing rural communities. A Senate inquiry received submissions detailing threats of intimidation and violence amid worsening rhetoric.”
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Truths and Life Intentions
I am going to die. It could happen at any moment.
But I am here now, and that is truly a miracle.
All known life is a miracle. We live on Earth – just a pebble in the vast cosmos, our only home.
All life on Earth is biologically related – a family.
We are made of stardust. We are one.
I am aware my life simply consists of a multitude of nows. And do my best to live in the now as often as possible. It’s all I’ll ever have.
I will make the most of my time, being true to myself and living out my values.
I invest my precious time:
- Loving myself.
- Loving family and friends.
- Loving all other life I interact with.
- Working to prolong the existence and maximize the quality of life on Earth.
I do this because I love life. And I want as many people as possible to experience as good a life as possible, including people who aren’t born yet, like my kids and grandkids.
In my heart, I know contributing to others’ happiness and making the world a better place is the right thing to do.
By being conscious of these truths and consistently acting on my intentions, I will flourish.
~ Ryan Hagen, author of the new book “Your Guide to Climate Action”
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Transcript of The Sustainable Hour no. 570
Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General
“Climate change is here, it is terrifying and it is just the beginning.”
Jingle:
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.
Tony Gleeson:
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour for what is our 13th birthday celebrations. We’d like to acknowledge that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people. We pay tribute to their elders – past, present and those that earn that great honour in the future. We’re on stolen land, land that was never ceded, always was and always will be First Nations land. Each week we’re trying to dip into the ancient wisdom that they’ve accumulated from nurturing both their land and their communities for literally millennia before their land was stolen. We know that in that ancient wisdom, there are many lessons for us as we navigate the climate crisis.
Mik Aidt:
Tomorrow is The Sustainable Hour’s birthday. We started this program on 94.7 The Pulse on the 30th of October back in 2013. And that was about half a year after I had landed in this town, coming from Copenhagen with three small children and really felt a little bit like I had landed from the moon here. But we quickly got involved, didn’t we? And we’ve done 570 shows, as Tony mentioned, and more than 30 Regenerative Hours and 10 episodes of The Climate Revolution and now two Force of Life shows as well. Altogether more than 600 hours of radio about sustainability and about climate and talking with how many guests? I reckon certainly more than a thousand guests over these 12 years. Talking about how we make Geelong and the planet a green, clean and sustainable place.
So when we look back, how have we done with that? Have we had any successes? Well, I guess that depends on whether one sees the glass half full or half empty. We’ll be looking a lot more into that question today, in particular when it comes to climate with someone who’s got a very solid, I think, a solid understanding of where we are at. But first, we must learn what’s been happening around the world. And for that, we’re lucky to have Colin Mockett OAM, who has been scanning the news from around the world. And Colin, what do you have for us today?
COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK:
Yes, thank you Mik. And I don’t know how many years it was… I was not a founding member of The Sustainable Hour, as you remember. I was actually corralled and press ganged from the next studio and dragged in because I was part of the previous programme – and I’ve been part of it ever since.
And looking personally, the differences between 13 years ago and now, we’ve gone completely sustainable in our living arrangement. I’m now driving an electric car which is fuelled by panels on my roof, and I’m really very pleased with the world impetus which has picked up astonishingly when it comes to it. But there’s still so much to do and so far to go. But look, that’s by the by. We’ll talk about that, all of that, I’m sure later on.
My world roundup this week begins with the battle that’s underway to win the energy export markets between the world’s two largest economies. That’s China and America. And from our perspective, they couldn’t be more different. The US wants the world to buy its fossil fuels while China wants to sell its clean energy technologies. And right now, it looks like China is the clear winner.
The country’s exports of electric vehicles, solar panels, batteries and other carbon cutting technology has been climbing fast for years. Exports from China hit a record in August this year with $20 billion US dollars in products that shipped globally. That’s according to a new report that was released this week from the think tank Ember.
“China reached a record value in clean tech exports even as technology prices have fallen sharply,” said Euan Graham, who’s a data analyst for Ember. While the US, which has positioned itself as a major fossil fuel exporter, sold $80 billion in oil and gas abroad throughout July, that’s the last month with data available.
China exported $120 billion in green technology over the same period. That’s a 50 per cent difference. And it continues a trend that has been ongoing for now four years. The US hit a record in oil exports in 2024. Now that’s according to the Energy Information Administration. Yet China’s clean technology exports were 30 per cent billion dollars higher.
But dollars only tell part of the story. The price of solar panels is falling, which means that China is actually exporting more of them per dollar that’s earned. August’s solar exports revenue was nowhere near as high as that was set in March 2023, but 46,000 megawatts of power capacity shipped abroad set a new record.
So they’re getting fewer dollars for it, but they’re exporting more megawatts. And crucially, China’s exports in emerging markets are growing rapidly. This year, more than half of China’s electric car exports have come from outside the OECD. That’s the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, essentially a group of rich countries.
The U.S., under President Donald Trump‘s first term, pushed for higher oil and gas production. As a result, the country rapidly increased oil and gas exports. Now, in his second term, Trump is trying to drive production even higher by loosening regulations while also reducing the US’s green technology sector. It’s worth noting here that this quarter,
China will sell more electric cars domestically than all of the cars that are sold in the US, regardless of fuel types. From the point of view of countries importing American or Chinese energy goods and technologies, the division could not be starker.
“Clean energy exports is hardware which once a country has bought it will generate electricity for a decade or two to come.” That’s a quote from Greg Jackson, who is chief executive officer of Octopus Energy, the UK’s largest energy retailer. “Whereas with gas, the day you buy it, you use it and it’s gone forever.” And that’s the big difference.
Now, in the lead up to COP30 in Brazil, a group of 150 US companies have delivered a letter to the incoming COP president to affirm their commitment to deploy solutions in the United States and to partner with other governments worldwide to achieve the global goal of doubling the rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030. Now this is despite their president declining to even take part in COP30. The letter to COP30’s president, André Corrêa, listed 152 signatories, including large and small companies, businesses and trade associations across all sectors of the US energy value chain. They represent manufacturers of insulation, heating and cooling, refrigeration, lighting and digitalisation technologies, energy service companies, financial providers, project developers and consultancies, renewable energy, energy storage and energy end-users, chemicals, building materials, suppliers, construction firms, and more.
“Governments must see that US companies are staying the course and committed to delivering the technology solutions needed to double the rate of energy efficiency improvements in five years.” That’s a quote from Lisa Jacobson, president of the US Business Council for Sustainable Energy and part of the letter.
“Saving energy while growing the global economy is good business. Now is the time for continued public-private partnerships to seize on this interest and make real progress towards unlocking new energy resources, improving reliability and lowering costs worldwide.” And that’s pretty heartening in the lead up to COP30.
But now, news of the world’s most sustainable sports team. At the weekend, Forest Green Rovers played Boreham Wood at home and they won 2-1. That leaves them in their position fifth in the ladder. Meanwhile, the Forest Green Rovers women played in the FA Cup away at Dartford, and they lost 5-1. So they’re out of the cup. So that slightly downbeat note ends my round up for the week.
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Jingle: (10:42)
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
Tony:
Our guest today in show number 570 is Ian Dunlop. We’ve had Ian on before. Ian was an ex-executive of the fossil fuel company, which he was in that industry for some time. Since then, he’s moved on and maybe as a result of seeing the damage or realising the damage that that industry is causing, he’s Chair of the Advisory Board for the Australian Breakthrough, the National Centre for Climate Restoration. He’s a member of the Club of Rome and the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group as well as other positions of responsibility, particularly on the climate front. So Ian, welcome to our special show and thanks for coming on.
Ian Dunlop:
Well thank you very much Tony and particularly for inviting me on your birthday. This was very very exciting.
Tony:
Right, we understand the last 12 months haven’t been all that good for you health-wise, but what’s up front for you at the moment?
Ian: (12:03)
Well, I’ve been out of action for about a year and with medical issues and so on, I’m just sort of getting back into it now. And I’ve been following the threads of what’s been going on and getting very frustrated because you couldn’t be commenting very much on. I suppose my main involvement at the moment is here in Australia with the Australian security leaders climate group, as you mentioned, and internationally with the club of Rome.
And a few things, I guess, are really coming together in those sort of respective arenas. My big concern at the moment is the fact that Australia is very rapidly positioning itself on the wrong side of history. I think we had great expectations of the Albanese government when it came to power in 2022, that this was going to be the opportunity for some major changes.
But unfortunately, I think what we’re seeing is that nothing’s changed. And in many ways, we’re going backwards because Australia at this point in time is virtually a petro-state. And there’s a lot of talk about COP31 and the need for us to gain approval to run that. But quite honestly, my concern would be is if we do it, it’ll just be the same as we saw in UAE in 2023 and Azerbaijan last year, where essentially fossil fuel dominate the discussion. And we really can’t afford for that to happen. So it’s something I’ll come back to.
But I think the big picture is what is concerning me in the sense that we’ve seen in the last few weeks, last month basically, several hundred pages of analysis and policy on the National Climate Risk Assessment being released, the National Adaptation Plan and so on, all of which is extremely good analysis. It’s the first time it’s been done in this country nationally, which is long overdue, and it’s brought together a whole lot of material that previously was in different places around the various silos within the bureaucracy and so on. But the problem is that like so many of these reports, you can’t see the wood for the trees. I the verbiage is such that the really important issues are buried.
Now, internationally, that’s been done quite deliberately and I might… tendency is to think of the same things happened here because politicians don’t want to be confronted with the reality that we now face and the reality that climate is accelerating far faster than we are being led to believe officially. We’re seeing things happen that are occurring 15 years, 20 years earlier than was expected by organisations like the IPCC. If you read those reports that have just been published here, if you get in behind the supplementary material, it’s all in there, but it’s buried and none of the really critical issues come out.
And our policymakers then pick up the summaries and off they go and we get, you know, the 2035 emission reduction targets of 62 to 70 per cent on what happened in 2005. And many people rejoice in the fact that that’s hard, realistic target that we possibly could achieve, but we’ll really have to sort go at it to do it. But that’s not the way that risk assessment should really work. What’s happening is we’re looking in those summaries at what the average is saying. What’s the average temperature increase? What’s the average sea level rise that we might be confronted with?
And that’s not the way you should do a risk assessment. In risk assessment, you have to look at the extremes. You have to say, what is the worst that could be thrown at us? And what are we going to do to solve that? Are we prepared to handle not a meter of sea level rise by 2100 or whatever, but possibly five meters? What was going to happen if that really did occur?
I mean the fact is at the moment that despite all the noise going on about the importance of staying below 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature increase compared with pre-industrial levels, 1.5°C is here. Australia was actually 1.68°C last year. 1.5°C is locked in to all intents and purposes. We are probably going to see 2°C temperature increase inevitably before 2040, possibly as early as 2035, maybe before that.
3°C will be extremely lucky to avoid. Now, that is going to bring massive changes. Some of the big ones are not even, well, they’re talked about in the National Risk Assessment, but only in very general terms. These big tipping points that are occurring around the world, where six of them have already… probably inevitable, things like the West Antarctic ice sheet, essentially the destruction of coral reefs around the world and so on.
I won’t go into all of them. And there are three or four others that we know are looming and are certainly going to get locked in probably between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius.
Now these are very big changes that once they start, you can’t turn back. And this is going to fundamentally alter the way that humanity have to operate. What we’re going to see is that large parts of the world become uninhabitable at between 2 and 2.5 degrees Celsius. That’s going to mean the movement of large numbers of people, possibly up to half a billion people, maybe a billion as it goes on toward 3 degrees Celsius.
It means fundamental things like the yields from crops fall off dramatically in parts of the world, the rice crops and so on in Asia…’ It means that we have increasing water stress, even though in some places you’ll see a sort of rapid increase in water availability from things like the melts in the Himalaya and the Alps in Europe, for example, which you can already see happening.
All these things, when you put it together, mean that our way of life, the way we’ve grown accustomed to over last 100, 200 years or so, is now fundamentally a threat, which is nothing new. We’ve known this for the last 20 years. And I guess some of us have been writing about it for that long too. Now the trouble is that our leaders have not been prepared to face reality and are still not.
So you can have the nonsense here where we have the sort of extremes of temperature and weather that we’ve been experiencing even in recent days. mean, you guys have had a bit of a problem down south in Melbourne. We’ve had a heat problem up here in Sydney and Queensland’s having it now. Now you put all that together, you look around the world and virtually in every part of the world we now have extreme events occurring as a result of what’s already happened that nobody had expected, whether it’s in, the U.S., which is getting hit probably more than most people from hurricanes and extreme temperatures of both hot and cold. Right the way through China, where you’ve seen massive flooding, you’ve seen it in Europe and in Spain, for example, in Valencia and so on recently.
All these things are happening, but nobody seems to be joining the dots. I mean, it’s just not being picked up and acted on.
You you put it all together, and what we’re really facing is a sort of a genuine existential threat to the way in which we understand humanity and the way it’s grown up. I mean, our way of life is now under very serious threat, and that threat is far more imminent than it was, you know, even five years ago. Sir David King, the former chief scientist, a climate scientist in the UK, has said three years ago that “what we do in the next five years is going to determine the future of humanity.” And I think as you look at it, I mean, that’s right, that things are happening now, which you just can’t just sort of file away saying, ‘Well, we’ve seen these extremes before.’ It’s all, you know, nothing new.
Now, a further problem in all of this is that it’s not just climate. We have issues on biodiversity. Obviously, we have the looming threat of nuclear war, which is even more, I guess, acute at this point in time we’ve seen for many, many years, particularly if you live in Europe and what have you, it’s pretty obvious. We have threats of pandemics, which we’ve known about for a long time. There’s major plastic issues which you’ve seen talked about, particularly recently on microplastics and the rest of it. Overpopulation issues, the question of what’s going to happen with uncontrolled technologies like AI and so on, whether that’s going to be used wisely or otherwise.
And I suppose maybe in some ways the worst of all is the question of misinformation and disinformation, which we’ve seen on climate, going back 40, 50 years and it’s still going on, sadly. And you see it in our political system. And the fact that today we have an opposition who can still be really fundamentally questioning whether climate change is happening or not, absolutely beggars belief. I mean, I don’t want to waste time going there for any length of issue, but the very fact that that can even be happening in 2025 is just astonishing.
What we’re now faced with is the fact that if we want to address this, we have to now move way beyond what is currently being talked about in terms of solutions to emergency action. We’ve got to start to treat this like a wartime situation where all of the, this is seen as the absolutely top priority and all those other issues I talked about I think are critically important. They have to be solved.
(23:32)
But in my view, climate is the most acute because if we don’t get on top of that, the rest become fairly academic. And you’ve got to maintain our survival. Now, if you look at the way our system is really structured, firstly, domestically, we are still assuming this is just one other item on the political agenda. This is like anything else, whether it’s tax reform or housing… “We can sort this out and it, you know, it all takes time.”
I mean, the very fact that the National Risk Assessment took two years to put together is a complete nonsense. The first part of it was done in three months, but we’ve never been told that bit. That’s the secret bit, which was done by the Office of National Intelligence on the threats external to Australia.
The second part took two years, and it doesn’t really, it’s all watered down. It doesn’t really reflect the despite all the good work that’s gone into it, it doesn’t bring out the critical specific threats that we face, as I’ve said. Now the government is taking the view that this is all moving fine, we’ve got our targets and on we go. There’s no sense of urgency. And we have to engender that urgency to get people to face up to reality.
We’ve got to really look at a whole of nation reassessment of where we’re going. What nobody’s doing is pulling all this together and saying, hang on a minute, we’re spending $386 billion on submarines, which we don’t need and will not actually meet the interests of Australia. We are locking ourselves in to ever increasing commitments for the United States, which is itself moving to a position of becoming a failed state and with declining global supremacy in the way that it once had. It is a state which is now in total denial on climate change at the top. Although the states in the US, the individual states are still continuing. I think as Colin said earlier, with a lot of the changes that they had intended to implement, which is good to see.
But the fact is that what the US is doing is fundamentally undermining serious action on climate change in a way that we haven’t seen for a long, long time. mean, the US has always been involved in trying to stop climate action. It was happening when I first started on a lot of this work in the 1980s. The think tanks were involved then, are still doing it now, except it’s all gone into Project 2025, I think, which is the blueprint for the Trump administration, pretty much.
We also, moving beyond that, have major wars occurring around the world, in Gaza, obviously, and in Ukraine, as well as many other places. What is missing in all of this is that military emissions in a climate context are very substantial.
The United States very carefully in the days of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 excluded military emissions from the global accounting process for carbon emissions, quite deliberately because they didn’t want to be constrained in terms of what they might want to do emission-wise.
It’s generally estimated that emissions when you don’t include war fighting and starve are about 5-6 per cent of total global emissions, which is quite significant, bigger than many countries. When you add in conflict and reconstruction, as we’re seeing in Ukraine and Gaza, and we haven’t even got to the point of trying to reconstruct anything yet. then that figure can drop very substantially. Some estimates even double it up to 10 per cent of global emissions.
Now this is absolutely crazy stuff. I mean, here we are in a world where the future of humanity is at stake and we are quite deliberately doing everything we possibly can to make it far, far worse. And the leaders of these countries are clearly in the same boxes as the Coalition, where they don’t actually believe in climate change. Couldn’t give a damn, to be quite honest. Much more important to hold on to power and what have you.
So from a national point of view, you know, coming back to what the government’s been doing, we have to start to really think hard about what do we really value in this country? Because we can’t maintain our current economic system. It doesn’t add up. If you look at the money we now want to spend on defense, you look at the impacts of climate change, which we’re already seeing, which are climbing dramatically in recent years, and all of the other things we want to do, what’s important?
Because we are going to have to abandon certain things and focus on the stuff that really matters. And to be quite honest, you know, the orca, steel, nuclear submarines are totally irrelevant to the real future we face. Well, that money should be being spent on seriously looking at, you know, preparing ourselves serious adaptation plans for climate and particularly higher mitigation levels than we’re currently seeing because the current assumption, you know, the 2035 targets to sound radical is quite erroneous.
I mean: that we need to move far more quickly than that. The whole issue about net zero by 2050 is a nonsense. I mean, net zero by 2050 was purely a political exercise in giving people a target where they could kick the can down the road and could be saying they were doing good things and continue with business as usual. No, nothing’s changed. So I think we need to know sit back and really look at what is really important in this country. Where are we going to place our priorities? Stop playing games and wanting to be part of the big league and join the militarisation around the world and start to think about the things that will ensure our survival. Because militarisation is not going to do that. So I think that’s the big theme that I would put forward.
Maybe we leave it at that we can have a talk about that because there’s a lot behind that I mean what do do with social indigenous issues and so on in that context and all the pressing issues in inequality and so on that causing so many problems elsewhere on the wall.
Colin: (30:47)
Well, Ian, you’ve rolled out a really big agenda there. And I have to start by saying that I am delighted that you’re heading the think tank that’s advising the government. But at the same time, I’m aware that you used to work for the fossil fuel industry. Could I ask you which company in particular you worked for?
Ian:
Yeah, I spent most of my time in Shell.
Colin:
Look, you must also be aware that the reason that our governments, governments worldwide, but particularly our government, drags its feet is because it’s very much in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry. Now, I wonder whether you’ve still got friends or colleagues in the business and whether they are, their thinking has changed as yours has – of just how wrecking they’ve been by corralling in our ministers and our governments into doing, into slowing down on what we should really be trying to accelerate. And that is the change that’s needed to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels and stop burning them and polluting the atmosphere. Because that’s basically what it’s all about, isn’t it?
Ian:
Yeah, the absolutely most critical issue is reducing emissions. Firstly, and secondly, you then have to pull down carbon from the atmosphere because we’re currently, in CO2 terms about 430ppm, I think, which is an absolute record. It’s gone up. If you add in the other greenhouse gases, it’s way above 500. We’ve got to get it down toward 350ppm CO2 and that requires drawdown, not just stopping emissions because if you stop emissions increasing or even get to net zero you still have to draw down the carbon that’s already up there. So we have a very big task and nobody talks about that drawdown bit very much.
I mean, we have all this nonsense about carbon capture and storage and every major policy that’s put up as a large component of CCS which is in there even in the most recent stuff coming from the Climate Change Authority, for example, CCS doesn’t work. I mean, we know that. It never has, unless you are in a situation of using depleted oil and gas reservoirs, and particularly you’re using it for extracting more oil and gas, which is not what we want to do.
So, you know, there’s a lot of nonsense in this thing that nobody’s been prepared to front up to officially, but I think coming back to your question, the big problems I think in business are the way that everything has become incredibly short term, the pressure from major investors for short term financial returns and people wax and wane depending on the pressure that’s being exerted upon them.
So on the one hand, you have what was a very big mistake which was made years ago in the 1990s of pay for performance for executives and in other words, bonus type payments, where you have CEOs these days getting earning ridiculous amounts of money for what basically you did because you just had a salary in historical terms. But that has fundamentally changed the ethical framework of business in my view, particularly in the fossil fuel industry, because, you know, people get locked into these extremely high rates of pay.
And that becomes the be all and end all almost in the view of many of them in the way they operate. And now at the same time, you have obviously pressure for continued economic growth from governments and companies want to be part of that, which again, puts you in a very short term context because growth is going to have to stop and slow down and when you put all that together the incentive the preparedness to actually act on cutting fossil fuels as falls, and that’s what we’ve been seeing recently.
. . .
SONG
‘Time to Wake Up’
A tribute to the American Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s relentless fight for climate safety, calling on us all to wake up and confront the battle between truth and lies.
Verse 1:
They sold the truth for a shipload of coal
Turned their lies into a platform for oil
Constructed pipelines where dark money could flow
Pulled all the strings so they could rewrite the rules
They bought the judges, and the media too
So when the rivers rose, and storms grew dangerous
We were asleep, we didn’t know what was going on
But we saw the sky turn red, and suddenly, all the fish were dead!
Chorus:
Time to wake up — let the reckoning begin
Time to wake up — there’s a storm breaking in our skies
Time to wake up — this is a battle we need to win
The battle between truth and science — and power and lies
Verse 2:
They dressed up greed in a righteous disguise
They built their fortunes on a thousand lies
Bought the silence of elected leaders
Wrote the rules that protected their business
But hey! Science speaks, and our children know
We can’t buy back that world we let go
There’s no hiding, no place to run
The ice is melting, the damage is done
Chorus:
Time to wake up — let the reckoning begin
Time to wake up — there’s a storm breaking in our skies
Time to wake up — this is a battle we need to win
The battle between truth and science — and power and lies
Instrumental intersection
Bridge:
Time to wake… time to wake…
Time to rise, we’re under attack
Time to wake… time to wake…
We see the danger, we’re fighting back
Final Chorus:
Time to wake up — let the reckoning begin
Time to wake up — there’s a storm breaking in our skies
Time to wake up — this is a battle we need to win
The battle between truth and science — and power and lies
. . .
Mik: (38:49)
Ian, I’m curious to hear then what you think should be our specific ask to government, because it’s not enough, I think, to just say, you’ve got to go into emergency mode. We need to be more specific. And just as an example, Robert Hinkley has been talking for years. He’s a former corporate lawyer. And he says, we need to change corporate law. And it’s actually that simple that if you made it a responsibility of directors of all companies, that they, yes, they must look after their companies and yes, they must protect the interests of shareholders, but not at the expense of damage to the environment. By simply adding that line about damage to the environment, we could make a huge shift, he says. And now you just mentioned that as an example, what are your ideas in terms of specific asks that we can bring forward?
Ian:
Yeah, I know Robert’s argument and I think it all makes good sense, but in a way we’ve been trying to do that for years in a slightly more general context in improving standards of corporate ethics and ESG and this sort of thing as they call it, know, environment social governance issues. I think we have to be much more specific now because we don’t have time to try and do it through the legal process.
I think legal cases certainly help in confronting corporates with reality. But the fact is, in terms of governments, we have to now pick up on what they themselves are producing, like this risk assessment and so on, and say, look, you can’t keep doing this. I mean, here is the information. You have produced it. This is what it is saying. And we now want you to start to act politically in line with, you know, essentially what your own evidence is presenting. Now, to some extent, we’re seeing that with the election of the independents and the Teals in parliament and the lack of support for the two main political parties.
But in the end, this is all going to be too slow. We have got to speed it up in, I think, getting the community really to understand what it is when our facing. I we’ve seen what happens, for example, with the responses to the Gaza genocide in terms of public demonstrations around the world. My own view, personally, is that the only reason we’re seeing changes from Trump and people on trying to solve that conflict, appalling as it is, is because public opinion globally is now coming out so strongly against it.
We have to achieve something similar now with climate, which has been hard to do because of the fact that it was so distant. We weren’t seeing anything. Nothing was really happening. Yes, yes, the scientists were warning us, but things have changed. We now have it right up in front of us, and we’re probably going to see a rather nasty summer in this country. And it will be due to climate. And that, I think, those realities now have to be marshaled into campaigns to force governments to stop subsidising the fossil fuel industry, start to insist that we see a decline in those industries.
It doesn’t mean to say they will disappear overnight and we will need some amount of gas, but we don’t need new gas projects like the North West Shelf and Scarborough and Browse and Godner’s, all these things. We do not need them. We have enough gas. It’s a matter of not selling it for a profit that ludicrous amounts have returned to, you know, what are basically foreign shareholders.
Tony: (43:01)
Ian, I’d to go back to your personal journey, I guess, if for want of a better word, when you like you’re part of this industry and you change your concern for the consequences of continuing to do that, which has played out since. Was it a person that you spoke to? Was it something that you read? Yeah, your own, the process that you went through to sort this out.
Ian:
Long story! Earlier in my career, I got involved in a lot of the long-term thinking that goes on, particularly in Shell at that point, and scenario work and what have you, looking at the long-term future. It’s sort of like the Club of Rome published in the Limits to Growth Report in 1972.
But companies like Shell were doing that sort of thing in parallel, you know, around about the same time. And I’ve always been interested in that stuff and I spent a bit of time early on in my career involved in that. And I was well aware that, you know, climate was going to be an issue back in the 70s and whatever, suppose. As time went by, having worked in the oil and gas exploration side and then coming to Australia to get involved in the coal industry here for Shell, it became clear that we were going to need to move to do something that rather quicker than people thought.
And I guess I reached that point at the end of the 80s of having tried to get a lot of that sort of thinking into some of my, with my, some of my coal industry colleagues, which I have to say in the late 80s was much more progressive in the coal industry than it subsequently turned out to be. Once the US influence had started to spread, I think here because the problem was the United States was desperately worried that Australia would start to become a climate leader. This was the late 80s and into the 90s as we were starting to get into Kyoto Protocol and things. We’re extremely concerned to stop that happening because that was seen as a weak link in the chain. If Australia suddenly became a climate activist as a country, would make it pretty hard for the US. So a lot of work went into making sure that didn’t happen.
That’s where our climate denial started, unfortunately. But I decided just at the end of the 80s, the early 90s, that it was time to make a change and try and reverse what I’d been involved in for the previous 30 years.
Mik:
And can I just say, Ian, you are in my world a hero with everything that you have done, so a big compliment for every speech that you have given, and the work that you continue to do now is so important. What I am concerned about is what if someone who listened to you speak today got a shock? What will you say to that listener?
Ian:
Well, first, thanks for your comments. I appreciate it that some of it gets through. Look, I think one of our problems is the knowledge of this stuff, despite all the noise about it, the knowledge of this stuff within our leadership groups, in our parliamentarians, in our business leaders is actually pretty poor, sadly. I mean, you know, people tend, as I said earlier, regard it as just another item on the agenda. It’s not seen as being the absolutely critical thing, which it really is. Now part of that’s because the risks, I think, have been downplayed over the years. It is hard to keep up the pressure, if you like, and the commitment if you keep seeing this happening, which has been occurring over a long, long period of time.
There’s no doubt about it, but I mean, in the end, you once you get locked into this, it’s not something you drop. I mean, you can’t just sit there and say, I’m happy to leave my grandkids to just face up to fixing this when I’m gone. I’d like to fix it before I do go, which is still, I guess, the thing that drives you. So I think, you know, there’s very much you get locked in to the fact that this can’t just be something that’s let go, which is what keeps you going. But I think getting that knowledge out there in a simpler form and what have you is absolutely critical to get people to understand what it is. It’s not something that’s an ideological issue or whatever in the way it’s been pitched for the last 30 years in this country. It’s absolutely straightforward common sense on the facts that are driving and I know right in front of us you can see it all around us that we’re getting into the strike.
Colin:
That’s, well, I’m aware that we’re coming towards the end of the program, but it’s been an absolute pleasure and I couldn’t think of a better guess to mark our birthday. Thank you very much, Ian. It’s been frightening, but a pleasure to hear it so well enunciated. And just keep on more power to your elbow.
Ian:
Well, think, thank you for that. I mean, I think the critical issue is you really have to prepare to actually talk about what is actually happening as opposed to, you know, sort of averaging out all this stuff and downplaying it. I mean, it seems to me that the things you critically have to do now are that you have to be brutally honest about the facts, what they mean. You’ve got to really be active in trying to drive that publicly and get both of our leaders and broader community. I think the broader community is particularly important because leaders follow, they don’t actually lead these days very much. That wasn’t always the case, but it is now. There must be the determination to keep pushing it and persevere in just trying to get the of the nonsense of our current policies.
Mik:
I would like to also knock on the doors of the ABC and SBS. They are our public broadcasters, but they are not fulfilling their role whatsoever. The other day, you know, using expressions as “a smorgasbord of extreme weather”. And then they talk about, “the kids are going in the swimming pool to keep cool.” That’s the level of reporting that we’re getting from the ABC when it comes to reporting on all the calamities that are happening. No context and no connecting of the dots.
Jingle
Mik:
What would you say that our listeners that we should ‘be’ – going ahead? We always talk about ‘Being the difference’. Is there something else that you think is relevant?
Ian:
Well, think active, honest, active and thinking broadly is critically important. You’ve got to start to bring these things together and say, you cannot continue this nonsense of spending vast amounts of money on nuclear submarines, which one of your local members, I think, is very keen on. Ensuring the survival of this country. I mean, this is the real survival, this is not militarisation and the saber rattling stuff. This is what matters and people have to understand that when I’m faced with that sort of choice.
Mik:
Be honest, be active.
Colin:
And next time you’re going to a birthday party, bring a bottle.
Ian:
Good point.
(laughter)
. . .
SONG (50:48)
‘How Many More Must Die?’
This song is inspired by 18-year-old Benjamin Van Bunderen Robberechts, who lost his friend Rosa in devastating floods in Belgium in 2021, and today haunted by the echoes of that disaster as floods in Texas claim dozens of lives, many of them children, recalling the “brown monster” that tore Rosa from his arms. Benjamin now campaigns for climate justice in her name.
Verse 1:
It was a summer day, the sky was clear
Laughter carried through the air
But the clouds rolled in, and the river swelled
And no one knew it was a farewell
I held her hand as the current raged
But the water tore the world away
Now I stand with her name in my chest
And the question burns with each breath
Chorus:
How many more must die?
Before we open up our eyes
Before we hear our children cry
Before we stop living on a lie
How many more must die?
Verse 2:
Every headline reads another name
Every storm feels just the same
Young hearts lost in the rising flood
Dreams washed away in the mud
You can taste the fear in the air tonight
You can see the wrong in what feels right
You scream the words, but no one replies
The silence echoes in the skies
Chorus:
How many more must die?
Before we open up our eyes
Before we hear our children cry
Before we stop living on a lie
How many more must die?
Bridge — instrumental
Chorus — repeat, bigger and layered:
How many more must die?
Before we open up our eyes
Before we hear the children cry
Before we stop living on a lie
How many more must die?
Outro:
The rain returns, the rivers rise
I never got to say goodbye
Look in my eyes, don’t turn aside
How many more must die?
. . .
Audio excerpts:
“We’re seeing is the worst case scenario playing out before our eyes.”
“More than 20 young girls are missing from a summer camp and at least 24 people have died.”
“Local authorities have called the flooding an unprecedented disaster which came with almost no warning.”
“You can feel in the water that something is wrong with the world.
How many more children must die before we do something?”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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