(Image: Mitchell Squire/Private Media)

Capitalism will fix the global warming emergency, Scott Morrison insists. The irony of that, given his government’s determination to continue and strengthen our fossil fuel addiction, is capitalism will be the only way to reduce Australia’s emissions.

With Australia teaming up with fellow coal addicts India and China to prevent a COP26 commitment to the phasing out of coal, and its abrogation of the agreement the moment it was signed via a refusal to consider an increase in our 2030 target, we confirmed our role as a key international saboteur of climate action.

As Crikey has been explaining, this is driven by the Coalition’s policy of subsidising increases in coal exports and its support of the greater gas production and export by major political donors Santos, Woodside and Origin.

While that may change at the margins in the event of a Labor victory at the coming election, neither side is sufficiently committed to the kind of phase-out of fossil fuels required to prevent global heating beyond 1.5 degrees.

Remember that according to the peak body for fossil fuel interests, the International Energy Agency, just to reach net zero by 2050 — which is inadequate to prevent serious warming — requires no new coal mines or gas fields, or extensions of existing ones, from this year. To reach more ambitious 2030 targets will require the shutting down of coal and gas production (or the development of a new technology that, unlike carbon capture and storage, actually works to abate fossil fuel emissions).

The government’s current plan, confirmed by its own modelling, is to reach 15% net emissions by 2050, and not “net zero” at all, with the final 15% to descend on Australia via unknown technology parachuted in like in a cargo cult.

With the governing class unwilling to take adequate action to curb coal and gas production, it’s up to investors and lenders to choke off all funding for new fossil fuel development, in accordance with the IEA’s own roadmap.

An insight into the start of this process could be found in the Weekend AFR, where the travails of our biggest fossil fuel culprits were on display. The acting head of Oil Search, which is about to tie-up with the country’s biggest climate criminal, Santos, lamented that conditions for obtaining funding had tightened noticeably even since the start of the year. Independent analysts backed his assessment. Santos and Woodside have also focused on developing the size to self-fund new projects rather than rely on capital markets, with major Australian banks capping fossil fuel lending.

This is why the Morrison government is so desperate to pump money into fossil fuel companies by subsidising transport costs for coal exports and funding fake emissions abatement measures like CCS — because they face higher capital costs.

To have a chance of keeping global heating to a manageable range, bank lending has to be cut altogether, not capped. Major bank lending to fossil fuel companies, even those of the size of Santos and Woodside, must acquire the same odium as Westpac’s enabling of child abuse through its money laundering failures.

Equating fossil fuels with child abuse might appear a long bow, but if anything, the death and illness toll from global heating will exceed even the misery, injury and death inflicted by global child exploitation and abuse, and moreover will last the entire lifetime of our children and their kids as the planet continues to cook. Lending or investing in fossil fuel companies, by directly enabling the expansion of fossil fuel production, has to be recognised as the generational child abuse it is.

The same applies to super funds and to individual investors. The time for leaving climate action to politicians who refuse to lead is over.