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The Sustainable Hour no. 594 | Transcript | Podcast notes
This week on The Sustainable Hour, we zoom out to the global stage and ask a bold question: if international climate negotiations are moving too slowly, could a global Fossil Fuel Treaty become a better and faster pathway forward?
Our guest is Michael Poland, Campaign Director of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, who joins us from northern New South Wales to explain how a proposal first championed by Pacific Island nations is rapidly gaining support among governments, cities, health organisations, faith communities and civil society groups around the world.
. . .
Mik Aidt reports on Denmark’s new government’s ambition to become climate neutral by 2045, and Colin Mockett OAM explores major developments from around the globe:
• Ethiopia becomes the first country in the world to ban the import of internal combustion engine vehicles, while electric transport continues its rapid expansion across Africa.
• New warnings emerge about the likelihood of an El Niño event and what it could mean for Australia in the months ahead.
• Economist Andrew Leigh raises uncomfortable questions about existential risks facing humanity, from climate change to artificial intelligence.
• Australian sales of electric and hybrid vehicles reach record highs, with low-emission vehicles now accounting for almost half of all new car sales.
. . .
The centrepiece of this episode is our conversation with Michael Poland about the Fossil Fuel Treaty initiative.
So what exactly is a Fossil Fuel Treaty?
Unlike the Paris Agreement, which focuses on emissions, the proposed treaty would directly address the production and expansion of coal, oil and gas. Its three pillars are:
• Ending the expansion of fossil fuels
• Negotiating a fair and equitable phase-out
• Supporting workers and communities through a just transition
Michael explains how Pacific nations such as Tuvalu and Vanuatu helped launch the initiative, why countries like Colombia are joining the conversation, and how a coalition of ambitious nations could potentially move faster than the consensus-driven COP process.
The discussion explores whether the treaty could become a significant new force in global climate diplomacy, similar to the treaties that successfully addressed landmines, ozone-depleting substances and nuclear weapons.
We also hear why the next major gathering in Tuvalu in 2027 could become an important focal point for climate action across Australia and the Pacific.
As always, we conclude with our guest’s answer to the question: What should we be? Michael’s answer is simple but powerful:
“Be ambitious and visionary”
Because when the scale of the crisis is enormous, our imagination and solutions need to be equally bold.
→ Find out more about the treaty at: www.fossilfueltreaty.org
. . .
We end this episode with Minister for Climate and Energy Chris Bowen‘s speech at Monday’s Monday’s opening ceremony of the UN Climate Summit in Bonn, Germany. It unintentionally reinforces Michael Poland’s point: the world conversation is moving. The question is whether the Australian public conversation moves with it.
“People see a crisis that’s huge and they really want to see huge solutions that are commensurate to the scale of that crisis. … Countries now want to talk about how we will do that transition rather than if.”
~ Michael Poland, Campaign Director of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative
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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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NEWSLETTER:
→ Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative – 10 June 2026:
From Santa Marta Breakthrough to Tuvalu 2027
“Over the past 18 months, our team, supported by our powerful network, took an enormous strategic and financial risk to help create the first-ever dedicated multilateral process focused on fossil fuel phase-out. Many people said it could not be done. We did it anyway.”
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TRANSCRIPT
of The Sustainable Hour no. 594
António Guterres, UN Secretary-General: (00:00)
The science is clear. El Nino is arriving on our doorstep in the coming months with 90 per cent certainty. The world must treat it as the urgent climate warning it is. El Nino conditions will pour fuel on the fire of a warming world. The only effective response is climate action equal to the crisis. Ending the addiction to fossil fuels, accelerating the shift to renewables, protecting the most vulnerable, and delivering early warning systems for all.
Jingle: (00:32)
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.
Tony Gleeson: (00:50)
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour podcast. 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 broadcasting from stolen land, land that was never ceded, always was and always will be First Nations land. As we face up to the climate crisis, there’s so much value and experience for us in their ancient wisdom that they’ve accumulated by nurturing both their land their community for millennia. And in that ancient wisdom lies so many of the answers that we’re going to need as we face up to the climate crisis.
Mik Aidt: (01:49)
Denmark finally has a new government. And it has set out an ambition to become the greenest government in Danish history. And as we’ve sometimes talked about here in The Sustainable Hour, Denmark is already pretty green. But now they’re really going to roll forward. And they’ve already said that they’re going to move the typical 2050 target of becoming carbon or climate neutral by 2050 – they’re moving that five years earlier: they want to be climate neutral by 2045.
So they’ve promised to set a target of 85 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. So they are stepping up to become what they call net-negative, which means actually that they’re going to take more greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere than they put in.
It’s a minority government, many small parties have come together. You could say it’s the equivalent to Labor in the middle of it. We have a so-called Social Democratic Party, and they – similar to what Labor is experiencing – have been almost halved. They used to have a lot of seats in in the parliament and now they only have half as many as they used to. So the voters went out to many small, you could say center and left parties.
One of the parties is called ‘The Alternative’. They are almost like a climate action party. And another party which is has a funny name, is they’re called ‘The Radicals’. They’re actually called ‘The Radical Left’. But they are not radical at all. But they do have a very firm, again, green policy. And it’s I think these two parties that have really put the government as a whole on this green transition agenda.
That’s the kind of political ambitions I think that are inspirational. And it shows it’s doable! There are countries around the world who are getting on with the show.
Anyway, let’s get on with the show here in The Sustainable Hour – quickly over to you. Colin Mockett OAM. What do you have for us today?
COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK
Colin Mockett: (04:01)
Yes, thank you, Mik. And I think what you can say from from that is that Denmark has thrown down the gauntlet for other countries and let’s see how many European countries are going to pick it up and say we’re gonna be a leader too. I suspect that the UK might be among those, a surprising entry, as Keir Starmer is looking for ways of diverting attention from his own unpopularity.
But I’m actually going to start the roundup this week in Ethiopia, in Africa, in the Horn of Africa, where the government has placed a complete ban on the importations of internal combustion engine vehicles. Now that makes the continent’s second most populated nations. Ethiopia has some 135 million people there, and it’s got one of the fastest growing economies in Africa. But it makes Ethiopia the first in the world to ban fossil fuel vehicles. It’s part of an electrification revolution that’s underway in Africa, but it doesn’t get in any way into our media. It’s not led by EVs, but by electric two wheelers, which are called over there E2Ws and E3Ws, which are electric tricycles. And they’re revolutionising transportation on the African continent.
The impetus is driven primarily by replacing the bustling commercial motorcycle taxi that’s called boda bodas, along with there’s a sort of a van equivalent of it. It’s got a motorcycle at the front and then it’s got a van apparent thing at the back. They’re the main delivery units throughout Africa. The African market surged by roughly 70,000 units last year of electric boda bodas. These were initially manufactured in Kenya by companies that converted the Japanese motorbikes to create boda bodas. But now they’re being made in China and imported complete cheaper than the African companies could convert them. And they’re being made mostly by China’s largest e-bike manufacturer called Iadia.
Now some of the major African fleet companies are pioneering swappable battery networks to keep riders moving without having to stop to recharge, because recharging facilities in Africa like here are nothing like adequate. And so at the moment they’re getting around it by just taking the battery units out and replacing them. And you’ve got a sort of where you’ve got recharging places, they are doing it and just selling a newly recharged battery or exchanging it.
And this week saw new predictions from the World Meteorological Organization saying that we are on the cusp of an El Niño weather event. Now in Australia that’s likely to bring poor snow in our peak skiing season, and that’ll be followed by increasing summer fire risks, drought, extreme heat and late agricultural harvests. Not a very nice forecast for Australia.
The report predicted an 80 per cent chance of that El Niño for the period from June to August and a 90 per cent chance of it between July and November. Now this follows the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report that predicted El Niño was likely to emerge by July, and our own Bureau of Meteorology saying last week that all models indicate El Niño is likely to develop this winter.
Their report cautioned that no two El Niño weather patterns were the same. It predicted lower winter rainfall averages across much of Victoria, New South Wales, the ACT and Queensland, and Western Australia and parts of Tasmania. That just about leaves South Australia and the Northern Territories, the only ones unaffected.
An El Niño effect could also bring emerging drought and frost damage in southern cropping regions as early as September, then extreme heat bringing late harvest in October and marine heat waves water storage depletion and mass coral bleaching from January. And just to top all that, the Climate Council warned climate change would likely heighten the effects of El Niño. It produced data that showed El Niño cold years today are hotter than El Niño hot years of last century. So that’s the added effect of climate change on the weather, predictable weather changes.
Now, the annual Giblin lecture, which was delivered last month at the University of Tasmania by economist Dr Andrew Leigh. He is a Labor member of the federal government and an economist. Now economists are usually optimists advising people on how to get richer by consuming more. They might cover depressing subjects like recessions or wars, revolutions or pandemics, but they always look for ways to bounce back and resume economic growth. But not Dr Leigh on this particular lecture.
He asked his audience to consider the chances of the extinction of the human race this century. He said we should be thinking about it now because if we leave it too long we wouldn’t be able to fix it. So we need to begin the fixing process as soon as possible, he said. He quoted figures from the Australian philosopher Toby Ord, who’s now at Oxford. Ord considers the chances are perhaps as high as one in six, seventeen per cent of the human race becoming extinct this century.
And Leigh said that that fitted in with other expert assessments. And what’s the biggest threat to the human race? What are the things most likely to cause human extinction?
Leigh said that whereas in the past extinctions were caused by natural events such as fluctuations in the climate or asteroid strikes, the most important risks today are the ones that humans have brought upon themselves. Now this was made clear in the last century by the risk of nuclear weapons and also by catastrophic climate change.
But Leigh and several other experts now think that the greatest risks are from emerging technologies, such as advanced artificial intelligence. They think it’s AI. The second greatest risk comes from synthetic biology. He said that as we seek to make greater use of AI, we could unintentionally create technology that threatens our very existence.
Current AI developments already show forms of hacking, and when the new systems can gain access to code and networks and financial accounts, laboratories or military infrastructure, terrible things could happen, he warned. Essentially his warnings were that should terrorist organisations learn to use AI, it shifts the global threat of extinction.
to new higher levels. Now I won’t go any further into this, just to say that you can read the whole speech online at AndrewLeigh.com – A N D R E W L E I G H dot com. His entire speech is there and it’s well worth considering because it’s another thing that the press isn’t handling.
But I don’t want to leave you with that. I’ve got a bit of good news for you. This week’s figures show a record number of Australian drivers are choosing electric and hybrid vehicles, with low emission cars just under half of all new vehicles sales last month. The sale of petrol and diesel cars dropped by thirty per cent in May. That’s according to figures from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries and the Electric Vehicle Council, they agreed.
They showed that environmental cars totalled more than forty six per cent of all the new cars being sold during May. That was 21,300 EVs during the month, representing almost one in every five new cars sold in Australia and setting a record for the third month in a row. Hybrid vehicles also lifted with sales of plug in hybrids more than tripling. It grew by eleven per cent.
And that little bit of good news and amongst all the doom and gloom, I think what we’ve started with the EV, which started with Trump invading another country and that essentially stopping oil, has catapulted us into adopting EVs, which is gonna be good for the planet once we do even things all the way out. Whatever it is, it ends our roundup for the week.
. . .
Jingle: (14:25)
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
Tony: (14:32)
Our guest today is Michael Poland. Michael is the campaign director of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, which is adding numbers. We see numbers being added all the time. So Michael, we thought we’d get you on to have a chat about that, about how it’s all going. So welcome to The Sustainable Hour. Thanks for coming on.
Michael Poland: (14:56)
Thanks for having me!
Tony: (14:58)
Pleasure. So tell us maybe tell us your story, how you arrived at this place, the Fossil Fuel Treaty.
Michael: (15:08)
Yeah, thanks. Yeah, so I’m Michael, I’m the campaign director for the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative. and I’ve been I helped launch the campaign back in 2019. It’s a big global campaign that we’ll talk about today, but I happen to be based in northern New South Wales on beautiful Bungalow country. And actually, yeah, my story starts in Tasmania, Lutruwita, which is where I grew up and I actually got involved in climate activism as a youth activist in high school with the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. it’s quite a familiar story for a lot of activists in Australia, I think, coming through the AYCC.
And so, yeah, for, I think, the past 18 years, I have been working on different climate campaigns and particularly around the transition away from fossil fuels. and that’s involved, yeah, campaigns in Australia, site specific campaigns like the Morse Creek blockade that a lot of folks will remember. I went on or was at AYCC for a long time and then was the head of climate campaigns at GetUp for many years, helping scale some of the big global days of action here back in 2011, 2012 and really scaling up, yeah, some of the those big movement wide actions and collaborations that we saw in the in the Gillard era.
And then I around 2013 pivoted to work much more globally. So I worked with 350 and Avaaz around the globe, people’s climate marches, the really big mobilisations through 2014-2015, and seeing, yeah, the scaling from those kind of site specific campaigns to big global climate campaigns. And then I was actually based in India at that time and moved back to Australia to help work on the marriage equality campaign, and then had a brief amount of time working with the Greens.
But really for the last six years have been very focused on this campaign for a Fossil Fuel Treaty based here in northern New South Wales, but working with a really global alliance of governments and thousands of civil society organisations and cities and many other communities and indigenous peoples and health communities and wanting to push for a global plan and framework to manage the transition away from fossil fuels. And it’s gone from a big bold idea that very few people had heard about in 2019 to now a huge initiative that’s backed by a growing block of countries that are looking to start a new multilateral process on fossil fuels.
And in the last few months we’ve seen that really take off with especially the Santa Marta conference last month, which I’m sure we can chat about a bit more. But yeah, that’s a little bit of the backstory of how I got here and yeah, I’ve now got two little kids and that gives me a lot of reason and momentum to keep fighting this fight, to try to create a better future for them as well.
Tony: (18:24)
The countries that you referred to that are involved, are they countries that are impacted directly by the results of the fossil fuels going into our atmosphere?
Michael: (18:39)
Yeah, it’s becoming quite a diverse group of countries. So the first states to propose a Fossil Fuel Treaty were Pacific Island states. After the Paris Agreement was negotiated in 2015, they were successful in getting the 1.5°C limit into that framework, which is very historic. But the Paris Agreement made no mention of coal, oil and gas. And so really from immediately after, Pacific states have been discussing an explicit framework on fossil fuels to complement the Paris Agreement. That kind of snowballed in academic and legal circles, but then it was Tuvalu and Vanuatu that were the first countries to formally propose a Fossil Fuel Treaty in 2022.
And so now we have the majority Pacific Island states and also a number of Caribbean small island states. But they’ve been joined by much bigger economies as well. So you have also fossil fuel producers from the global south that can’t afford to transition themselves and they’re looking for international coordination and support. So a country like Colombia, that’s actually a huge coal and oil exporter, would like to find transition frameworks that can support them to transition and coordinate that globally, and so Timor-Leste is another gas producer, Pakistan is a big economy. So it’s not just frontline small island states now.
Mik: (20:05)
Michael, let’s just take one step back and explain what this treaty is saying. Is there a treaty or is it just like an idea? What is it in a in reality?
Michael: (20:14)
Yeah, so at the moment it’s a proposal. There isn’t a draft of the treaty, and that’s quite common in multilateral treaty negotiations. So on, you know, the treaty to protect the ozone, the Montreal Protocol, or the Nuclear Ban Treaty, or Landmine Treaty, at first you have these alliances of first mover governments that are kind of leaders on that issue, civil society organisations putting pressure on a on greater action and then academics and scholars kind of conceiving the idea of a treaty and a framework and then developing principles.
So the Fossil Fuel Treaty has some core pillars. one is non-proliferation, ending the expansion of fossil fuels. The second is a fair phase out, so negotiating phase out timelines and dates with equity built in. So wealthy countries that have used up a lot of the carbon budget, transitioning faster and supporting developing countries to transition more gradually. And then a just transition, so frameworks to protect communities and workers, particularly with finance and support.
So there’s there’s not a detailed written treaty yet, but there are pillars and these countries meet every couple months at both senior officials and ministerial levels supported by a number of senior officials and experts to develop that treaty further. And our hope is that in the coming year that they will land on a negotiating mandate and then they’ll begin actual negotiations of what a treaty text would be.
Colin: (21:53)
So far you’ve only mentioned countries and nations. Have you got any multinational companies in the equation? Or is it only nations that you’re dealing with?
Michael: (22:05)
Yeah, so a treaty itself would be a treaty between nation states, negotiated by countries. But we’ve been really intentional in developing an initiative that brings together a much wider range of actors and you could have those countries you could both have non state actors put pressure on more countries to join and push for the treaty to be stronger, and you could also start to have participation from non-state actors as well.
So we have 200 cities and subnational governments, hundreds of private sector companies, 4,000 organisations, there’s over a thousand elected officials, MPs, and senators. And that really draws on some of the experience of like that landmine treaty that I mentioned, or the nuclear ban treaty, where they had these really powerful alliances.
And another reason for that is I think often we talk about fossil fuels as a climate problem. But really it is a an industry that has many other direct harms and impacts. So you have air pollution, so the health sector’s been really, really active. At the moment we’re seeing huge amount of conflict and war over oil deposits. So the peace and demilitarisation and feminist movements have been really active.
You have huge inequalities and kind of communities have been held back from energy access or development or safe drinking water, in direct impacts on nature and the seas and so starting to shift the topic of fossil fuels out from just a climate conversation to a broader framework that addresses many of those harms. So you do have a lot of different communities coming in other than just those countries. So yeah, that’s been a huge focus of the campaign.
Colin: (23:53)
Michael, do you have any of the big climate emissions countries, America and China and ourselves, Australia? You know, we we export most of ours but we we are certainly responsible for a huge amount of emissions.
Michael: (24:12)
Yeah, it’s a really good question. So I obviously to protect the climate system we do need these countries to start to transition very rapidly, but at the moment the majority of climate policy making in the multilateral arenas done through the UNFCCC, which is a consensus-based mechanism. So all countries have to agree to what’s even on the agenda and it’s definitely on what their outcomes are. And so it’s very difficult to have strong policy commitments and advancings on fossil fuels. It’s taken 30 years even just to mention them.
And so to negotiate a detailed plan with Russia and Saudi Arabia and the US and really with Australia in the room is quite difficult. And so the idea of a treaty on fossil fuels is that it wouldn’t be universal. It wouldn’t have all countries and it wouldn’t be consensus based. The best metaphor for it is actually what happened on nuclear weapons. So you have a nuclear non proliferation treaty, which has many countries, including the big nuclear armed states, who are signatories to it, and that has failed to deliver on disarmament because those states do not want to disarm.
And so a smaller group of ambitious states negotiated the treaty on the non proliferation sorry, the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, the nuclear ban treaty. And that has a smaller group of states that set a higher bar and shifted norms and helped ban nuclear weapons.
And so very similar is happening on fossil fuels, where we imagine that the US and Saudi Arabia and Russia and potentially even Australia and Canada wouldn’t be involved in the early negotiation of a treaty. And that would allow it to be stronger and more science aligned, but also start to put pressure. You know, Australia’s been able to say that they’re climate leader in the past and ignore their harms of their exports. But if we have a Fossil Fuel Treaty and Australia is not a signatory of that, it creates a big question. Why is Australia not aligning itself with this front runner coalition? Especially if we start to see more and more fossil fuel producers join the Fossil Fuel Treaty like Colombia, Pakistan, Timor Leste. Yeah.
Tony: (26:28)
Michael, is it true to say that the countries that have signed and are signing at the moment and will in the future, they’re signing on to that, a fossil fuel free world? Do you think that’s the aim of most people that are and groups that are signing on and countries?
Michael: (26:45)
Yeah, I think increasingly there is a lot of people that especially in the present moment that see fossil fuels as a very volatile market to be dependent on and it’s shifting from just a climate conversation and we need to reduce these emissions to actually this system is having huge, devastating economic impacts, health impacts, and there’s a growing number of especially importer countries and communities.
They just don’t want to be heavily dependent on this on this industry and these fuels. And so they’re looking for transition pathways and they’re looking to diversify their economies. And so in the last six months, we’ve had a huge upswell in the amount of political interest in this conversation.
Santa Marta is a really good example of having about 60 countries come to a the historic first ever conference discussing a transition away from fossil fuels. Our initiative helped in propose and bring that conference into life with Colombia. And a year ago a lot of people thought that that was crazy, like that there wouldn’t not many countries would come to a conversation on fossil fuels. But that’s shifted so rapidly because of especially the US and Israel attacks on Iran and the impacts that’s had on the global oil economy.
Yeah, I think increasingly there’s a lot of interest in transitioning away from fossil fuels for a number of different reasons. And so, yeah, I think we face this window where there’s there’s an i I almost an inevitability about the transition and that countries now wanna talk about how we will do that transition rather than if.
At the moment there’s 18 countries participating in the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative and there’s around another dozen that are observing the process and they are all Global South states. And there’s a number of states in that group that have fossil fuel reserves, they would I guess they’re currently in an economic system where they have so much growing debt that they are looking for, they need options for how they pay off that debt and how they really stay afloat and how they keep schools and hospitals open. and so those fossil fuel reserves at the moment I guess are a bit of a lifeline.
But a lot of those states are also facing devastating impacts of climate change and have also seen how volatile it is to have a fossil fuel economy. and seeing the writing on the wall that if they open up new production, they may become stranded assets in the coming decades. And so you have these countries that actually would love to see international support, including to a reduce their debt burden by cancelling debt.
And so the group of countries that are discussing what a Fossil Fuel Treaty would contain have a number of finance experts. And one of the provisions that could be possible within a Fossil Fuel Treaty would be a group of countries setting up a debt resolution facility that’s explicitly focused on reducing the debt burden that’s driving fossil fuel expansion. You could also have other trade agreements that have like preferential kind of frameworks that help create economic benefits.
So you’re not just talking about, we all keep fossil fuels in the ground because of climate change. We’ll also keep fossil fuels in the ground because it’s like smart development and smart economic policy for us to avoid entering this debt trap, really, which has kept a lot of countries, I guess, tied to the fossil fuel economy, but also not really seeing the benefits from it. You have states throughout Africa that often refer to themselves as kind of the gas station for Europe where they’re exporting a huge amount of gas and it’s European countries that are seeing the benefit and European companies like Total Energy that are seeing huge benefits from those profits, but many citizens in those countries still don’t even have access to energy. So yeah.
Colin: (30:58)
Given the state of the world at the moment with the US invasion of Iran, we’ve seen a huge surge in numbers of people, for example, buying EVs. And there’s an uptake on how shall we say, climate measures, which is quite unexpected. Have you noticed any change in in the negotiations or how up to date are your negotiations? When was your last sort of gathering of the nations and how has that climate changed inside the negotiations that you’re conducting?
Michael: (31:41)
Yeah, absolutely. So the last meeting was at this Santa Marta conference and that was so it’s the first international conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels. 60 countries came and alongside that there was a ministerial meeting explicitly on the Fossil Fuel Treaty at which about 28 countries participated. Both the number of countries coming, but also the depth of the conversation was at another level, particularly because of the US invasion on Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. I think that’s really driven home that the… I think for many years there’s been a rhetoric that the fossil fuel economy is incredibly stable and that it’s this trustworthy system that we are kind of wedded to and we have no other alternative. It’s really shaken that belief. I think it’s really made a lot of countries urgently interested in the transition to see how they can not be dependent on these huge price shocks. They can be more great, I guess, as sovereign nations who are dependent on their own stable sources of fuels. They’re seeing the states that have strong electrification or economic diversification or rooftop solar and things not being as heavily impacted as those states who are so dependent on imports. And so, yeah, particularly for importer states throughout Asia or Africa or Latin America, there’s a sudden interest in how can we actually be less dependent on these imports. And so we saw a lot more countries coming to these conversations and really deep discussions on how can we scale, yeah, international cooperation on transitioning away from fossil fuels so that we don’t see these same kind of energy crises in the future.
Colin: (33:47)
Given the failure last year of the Treaty for a Voice for Indigenous people in Australia, and the reason or one of the reasons for Trump’s invasion of Iran in that they had sidestepped the Treaty for Nuclear Disarmament and were actually creating a weapon. How hopeful are you that your own treaty is actually gonna get up? What’s your personal chances of getting the treaty to work?
Michael: (34:20)
Yeah, it’s a good question. The treaties have had a really mixed success globally. There’s plenty of treaties that have not delivered on their objectives, but in often those are universal or consensus-based, and so they’ve been really held up with procedural address. There’s a number of examples where treaties have been used really successfully in the multilateral space to address urgent threats by uniting the group of countries that are ready to take action. So I’ve already mentioned a couple, but the Ottawa Treaty, the Ottawa process that led to the Mine Band Treaty that has close to phased out landmines is a great example. That was tried to be done through the Convention on [Certain Conventional] Weapons for a long time and was unsuccessful in that huge global consensus based forum and an ambitious group of countries took it in an outside process outside the UN.
The Montreal Protocol is another great example where you have a really successful attempt to protect the ozone from chlorofluorocarbons using a global framework. And that was really essential that it was a globally coordinated action rather than just leaving the transition to be domestic policies. And I think we see this on fossil fuels at the moment, like Australia, is a really good example. There’s, you know, rising pressure to accelerate a transition domestically. And we see, you know, a rollout of renewable energy. We see, as you mentioned just before, a big uptick in people switching to EVs. And you can imagine a lot of domestic policies, but there’s been a huge policy failure on curtailing the impact of our exports. And at the moment, there’s a huge number of coal and gas approvals.
And extensions through till twenty seventy. And so we see this trajectory for Australia just to continue pulling fossil fuels out of the ground and not being accountable for those harms. And so I don’t think anyone’s saying that this treaty will be the one and only silver bullet that will solve this huge global issue, but we do think it’s a really important tool, and that at the moment there’s no multilateral framework. So like like what was done on nuclear weapons, cluster munitions, landmines, chlorofluorocarbons, currently on autonomous weapons.
Like, the disarmament community has really successfully used multilateral treaties to protect the world from harmful weapons. And in many ways fossil fuels are a weapon of mass destruction that are causing more deaths than pretty much any other industry on Earth. And so we think it’s time for there to be a global framework and treaty and increasingly a lot of countries are aligned with that as well.
Mik: (37:16)
We’re speaking with Michael Poland who is pulling this Fossil Fuel Treaty out as a tool, or as a way to move further, now that we’re seeing one COP after the other failing. Michael, maybe you should just explain where you are, because speaking of fossil fuels, we are hearing a lot of engine noise in the background. It sounds almost as if you’re sitting in an airport or something, but I can see – and listeners can’t see that – but we can see lush green palm trees in the background.
Michael: (37:50)
Sorry about the noise. This is my backyard in northern New South Wales. I live near Bangalow, but my neighbours – right in the middle of this interview have decided to start doing some earthwork. So there’s excavation and machinery going on next door. It’s not coal mining, but it is some earthwork, so apologies for the background noise.
Mik: (38:11)
Do you think, Michael, that this could become like a replacement of the COP process? You know, COP being the Conference Of Parties, meaning all the countries meeting once a year, typically end of November, and where you know, year after year it feels like we’re getting nowhere because there’s this you know, Saudi Arabia comes and says, ‘No, no, we can’t talk about this’, ‘We can’t do this’ and so on. Could this treaty become like an alternative pathway?
Michael: (38:38)
It’s good question. So really, one thing we talk about, and actually the Brazilian COP presidency mentioned this term is two-track multilateralism. and so the UNFCCC process is very essential and will continue. You have, I guess, a forum for all countries globally to meet and try a line on consensus. And the fact that they have negotiated the Paris Agreement, have a 1.5°C target, have a system for countries to deliver nationally determined contributions and to try ratchet up that ambition. And you have work programs across mitigation, just transition, adaptation, loss and damage. Like you have all these very critical processes and negotiations for countries to meet and that is essential that continues and a lot of work needs to be done to put more pressure on countries to deliver more in line with their commitments on one point five.
And last week’s resolution at the UN General Assembly, where countries by a supermajority agreed that they would welcome the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion, which says that the 1.5°C limit in the Paris Agreement is not just a aspiration, it’s actually a legally binding limit and that states might be legally accountable to aligning with that and taking actions that under a lot of work needs to still be done in there and there’s growing demands for a reform of that system as well to make it more fit for purpose. So you could see the UNFCC start to have a voting procedure, for example, where you don’t you overcome the consensus process barrier there or reform as far as less fossil fuel lobbyists being allowed to attend the talks and kind-of flood and water them down.
We definitely see that process needing to continue and needing to be strengthened. At the same time, as I mentioned with all those other issues, there’s almost no major global threat that’s been ever tackled just through one multilateral framework. It’s often required many global frameworks and also even regional treaties. You could imagine, like on nuclear weapons, there is a regional treaty in the Pacific that is the Rarotonga Treaty. So the Pacific states actually negotiated a nuclear-free zone alongside global nuclear treaties.
And so you could see a number of different treaties on fossil fuels. And the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement were never designed to negotiate a transition away from fossil fuels. That wasn’t their initial purpose. And they, for example, don’t account for exports in nationally determined contributions and don’t have you know, is very focused on emissions rather than production of coal, oil, and gas coming out of the ground.
And so we think that there’s gaps in global governance and that they could be filled through a new fossil fuel treaty. That doesn’t mean we need to stop having the other frameworks, you know, another good example is the plastics treaty. That would really help tackle a big part of the global fossil fuel economy with petrochemicals and we hope to see that treaty ratified and strengthened. And so we imagine that there could be many different frameworks and treaties that all help work towards a fossil free future, but we do need an explicit framework looking at fossil fuel product production and extraction.
. . .
Mik (42:19)
That’s how many global perspectives we could fit into one little Sustainable Hour. Michael Poland, it’s been really amazing to have you and explain these very, very big questions to us. Now we know a lot more now what the Fossil Fuel Treaty is. But the next step for us as individuals – is there some way we can support your work or the stuff that’s happening globally here? How can we contribute as individuals?
Michael: (42:47)
Two things I wanted to mention there. So it’s a global campaign. You can go to the fossilfueltreaty.org website and you can endorse the proposal, or you can join one of the specific constituencies. So if you’re a church, there’s thousands of faith institutions that have endorsed. Or if you’re a doctor, you can join the health community and the World Health Organiaztion, or youth activists, or ask your MP or your local council to endorse. So there’s many different communities.
But particularly for folks in Australia… you know, I mentioned this historic first conference in the coal port of Santa Marta in Colombia. There they did initiate a new process on fossil fuels, the first ever global process on fossil fuels, and we hope that that will work towards this negotiating trade mandate on a new treaty. And the next conference will be held by Tuvalu in early 2027. And I think that’s a huge moment for people and organisations working on climate change in Australia.
I think a lot of people were expecting the COP to be held in Adelaide in November and that to be a huge moment to mobilise and put pressure on Australia and build strong public support and be a real catalytic moment for climate action. And in many ways I think Tuvalu 2027 can be that moment and could has even more potential. It’s not a consensus-based process.
Tuvalu is an incredibly strong climate justice champion. There will be less potential for greenwashing. It’s explicitly focused on fossil fuels. And so we hope to see a lot of the Australian climate movement and organisations and researchers and philanthropy really get behind this moment and make it really powerful. I think it it has the potential to shift the conversation on fossil fuels in Australia dramatically so keep an eye out for how you can be involved in that and start to to build that into your own campaigning and organising plans for the year ahead.
Tony: (44:53)
What funds your work? Or who or what funds the work? Do you rely on donations or is it philanthropic support?
Michael: (45:02)
Yeah, a bit of both. So the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative is a global alliance of organisations. So lots of groups campaign on it themselves, and a lot of countries work on it themselves. But we do have a small international support team that we are helping advance the campaign and support people to work on it. And that’s supported by donations from individuals so you can donate on the website and some support comes from philanthropic foundations as well.
Tony: (45:35)
Yeah. And that website again is http://www.fossilfueltreaty.org
Michael:
Fossil fuel treaty dot org. If any of your listeners would like to receive our newsletter, go to: https://www.fossilfueltreaty.org/newsletter
Mik: (45:44)
The ‘Be-section’ being that we always ask our guests, what do you think we should be? What do you think, Michael, that we should be?
Michael: (45:54)
I think too often we focused on what’s possible or we trying to thread the needle on yeah, you know
this could potentially be politically achievable in the next in the current context. And I think part of what our campaign has always been really focused on is what does the science say we need and what should we demand that’s incredibly ambitious and transformative.
And I think that that is part of why so many people globally have been drawn to be, to back this big idea, because people see a crisis that’s huge and they really want to see huge solutions that are kind of commensurate to the scale of that crisis.
So I would encourage people, particularly in the present political climate, to, I guess, not just play the art of politics and the art of the possible, but really be ambitious and visionary in imagining a better future and what we need to get there.
Colin: (47:02)
Ablaze to that, Michael: be fossil fuel free!
. . .
SONG
‘Stand Up’
The Opening Ceremony of the UN Climate Change Summit in Bonn on 8 June 2026: (48:01)
Chair:
I invite the COP31 President of Negotiations to deliver remarks. Australia, you have the floor.
Chris Bowen, Australian Minister for Climate Change and Energy:
Thank you, Chair. To my dear friend, Minister Murat Kharoom, distinguished colleagues, friends, excellencies. When we departed Bellem in November last year, we didn’t know that when we gathered next time here in Bonn, that the world would have experienced the worst energy crisis in our history. Indeed, that we would still be experiencing it.
Our economies, our supply chains, our people have been buffeted by fossil fuel supply and price shocks, and dealing with these has been the primary focus for our governments in recent months.
Friends, while we don’t know exactly when the Straits of Hormuz will open or when the conflict will ease, and when the Middle East will return to more normal arrangements, we do know this: that crises like this in a highly contested, uncertain geopolitical environment will become more frequent, not less. More unpredictable, not less. Worse, not better.
And while we’ve all been dealing with the short-term crisis, the overriding importance of dealing with climate change has not abated. Temperature records have continued to tumble. Climate-induced natural disasters continue to get worse. They’re increasingly frequent, indeed increasingly unnatural. Every country in the world is impacted, but the proportionate burden for smaller, less developed countries is unmistakable. And so the focus on us, the pressure on us for results, the imperative for progress is high.
But, my friends, because I start with these very real challenges, I don’t want you to think that I’m a pessimist. The opposite is true. Because the better news is that the answers to these challenges are not in conflict, but are in complete harmony. More clean energy, more electrification, less dependence on fossil fuels, more energy sovereignty and reliability, lower emissions. Accelerating the energy transition will ease shocks to our energy systems. Striving to achieve the Paris temperature goals will avoid massive economic costs.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the release of the Stern Review, which showed that the economic costs of climate action will always be outweighed by the costs of climate inaction. The fragility of fossil fuel supply chains makes this case even more compelling. Solar energy must travel 150 million kilometres from the sun to the earth, but it does not have to travel the 150 kilometres through the Straits of Hormuz. The wind cannot be sanctioned. Hydro energy cannot be blockaded.
And so when we say that COP31 must be the COP of implementation and acceleration, we mean it. We have to send a message to investors, to corporate boards, to economies that we are collectively committed to the task of decarbonising, building renewable energy, and reducing fossil fuel reliance.
Friends, the priority for COP31 has emerged with clarity. To electrify the global economy backed by modern grids and energy storage, whether it be electrifying industry in great industrial powerhouses like Germany, or assisting African communities with the journey to clean cooking, or improving energy security in the Pacific by replacing diesel with solar energy. We know that renewable energy is the cheapest form of power available to us.
In Australia, we have so much solar energy now that we will soon be offering households three hours of free electricity in the middle of the day. Renewables improve access, support new green industries, improve health outcomes, and support economic development.
The IEA tells us that electricity needs to make up 35 per cent of final energy use by 2035 to keep 1.5°C degrees in reach. So we must improve the current course set for 26 per cent by 2035. Friends, in a world of geopolitical uncertainty and energy disruption, the transition is not a risk. It is the solution and an immense opportunity.
Since the Paris Agreement, the renewable share of global energy has more than tripled. There has been a twenty-fold leap in global battery installations in the last five years. In Australia, 430.000 households have installed a household battery in the last 12 months. $2.3 trillion of investment is flowing into clean energy, two-thirds of all investment in energy worldwide. Because that’s where the growth and the certainty are.
But we can do even more. We need to meet the moment to achieve real action. We can enhance decarbonisation, grow clean energy and jobs, and cement resilient energy systems by diversifying energy sources.
What we achieve here in Bonn this week and next will directly shape the outcomes at COP thirty one. Our collective action, grounded in multilateralism, spurring investment and practical outcomes, remains the strongest tool to address global challenge of climate change and to harness the opportunities of the energy transition. Let’s get to work.
António Guterres: (53:47)
The longer we wait, the harder it will become.
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