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Australia is keeping company with Russia and Saudi Arabia through mass exports of fossil fuels, climate advocates argue, as they call on the government to embrace decarbonised energy projects.
A new report published by the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative details how Australia has quadrupled exports of emissions-heavy fuel sources since 1990.
The since-decommissioned coal-fired thermal power station at Liddell in the NSW Hunter Valley.Credit: Jonathan Carroll
“It’s absolutely irresponsible,” initiative president Kumi Naidoo said.
“It basically places Australia in the category of a petro-state, a term that’s used talking about Azerbaijian and countries in the [Persian] Gulf.
The report finds Australia exports 48 per cent of the world’s traded metallurgical coal, 19 per cent of the world’s thermal coal and 20 per cent of the world’s liquefied natural gas.
Overall, Naidoo said only Russia, and perhaps Saudi Arabia, sent a larger quantity of fossil fuels offshore.
Under the Paris Agreement, signatories are responsible for their in-country emissions only.
Naidoo, a South African former head of Greenpeace and Amnesty International, says if countries such as Australia profit by selling fossil fuels abroad, they are duty-bound to accept responsibility for the heating it causes.
The fossil fuel treaty is a collection of governments – including 16 countries and more than 120 sub-national organisations such as cities – that aims to phase out fossil-fuel use.
The Australian government does not support the initiative, though the ACT and the cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart, among others, do.
Naidoo is in Australia this week as part of Climate Action Week Sydney, which is staging events and rallies in the shadow of ex-tropical cyclone Alfred.
AAP
