The Prime Minister and Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor have been once again promising a ‘gas-led recovery’, supposedly to provide affordable energy and drive jobs growth. As faith leaders, we feel compelled to speak out in favour of a far more ethical and constructive path forward.
The pandemic has afforded us a preview of how a crisis plays out when the science is not properly heeded. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists have long been sounding the alarm that the health and safety of large parts of the population are at serious risk, both here and around the world. We are already seeing the damage to health and to the environment that they predicted.
As people of faith, our compassion is especially for younger generations and those on the frontlines of climate impacts. Australians are still raw from their experiences of the catastrophic summer bushfires and years of heartbreaking drought, but people around the world are also increasingly suffering from sea level rise, heatwaves, cyclones, forest fires, floods and drought. Scientists confirm that climate change has amplified the intensity of all of these, and impacts will only worsen. Dangerous tipping points will be reached if humanity fails to radically reduce the burning of fossil fuels.
In spite of the hype, gas is just another fossil fuel. When fugitive emissions are properly accounted for, gas is at least as polluting as coal. The refrigerating of liquified natural gas for export adds again to its emissions. We have seen how gas extraction destroys agricultural and forested areas and threatens to pollute groundwater. Globally, gas is a declining industry. Using public money to support it would be financially and morally irresponsible.
There is also the opportunity cost of diverting funds away from renewable generation and energy storage (including batteries, hydro and other technologies), which are more job creating, less polluting, and would lead to better health outcomes and a more resilient economy.
With climate-conserving technologies now ready for deployment and very competitively priced and supported by a great majority of citizens, now is the time to set a course to make Australia a renewable energy powerhouse.
'Younger generations are making sacrifices today largely to protect the health of older people, and it is they who will be called upon to pay off the debts we incur in the fight against this pandemic.'
Everyday Australians have shown repeatedly how they support strong action on climate change, but we know that genuine action is frustrated by the enormous political influence of extractive industries. During the COVID-19 crisis, the fossil fuel lobby has again been in the ear of the federal government, indeed the COVID Commission is stacked with mining executives. This largely hidden influence is undemocratic and it is ethically unacceptable.
Lobbyists of these industries regularly overstate the number of jobs in coal, oil and gas and the multiplier effects of these industries. They overstate their contribution to the economy and often lie about their adherence to environmental regulations that are already too lax.
Regional communities would be better supported by establishing new employment opportunities, rather than by propping up declining industries which create very low levels of employment, while also undermining land rights for Aboriginal traditional owners, increasing pollution and reducing health for impacts on rural communities, poisoning or diverting scarce water supplies, and creating the community distress manifest in widespread protests.
This is part of Australia’s pattern of evading its international responsibilities to cut emissions. Remember our nation pleading at last year’s COP25 to have carry-over ‘credits’ from the Kyoto Protocol counted, despite this option being intentionally excluded from the Paris Accord?
Younger generations are making sacrifices today largely to protect the health of older people, and it is they who will be called upon to pay off the debts we incur in the fight against this pandemic. Should we add to this the burden of a terrible climate-disrupted future which they have not created themselves?
COVID has created disruptions, and also opportunities. Can we use the opportunity of the economic stimulus not only to create more jobs now but also to create a fairer, more thriving and climate-resilient economy for our long-term future.
co-signed by
Rev Dr Peter Catt, Dean of Brisbane Anglican Diocese
Dr Rateb Jneid, President of Australian Federation of Islamic Councils/Muslims Australia
Rabbi Jonathan Keren-Black, Environmental Adviser to Moetzah of Australian, New Zealand and Asian Rabbis
Dr Gawaine Powell Davies, President, Buddhist Council of NSW
Main image: Gas range (Peter Asquith/Flickr)