Australian fossil fuel exports underscore Labor’s climate change fraud

A report by Climate Analytics, a non-profit policy institute, has found that the exports of the Australian fossil fuel industry generate more than three times as many CO2 emissions as those produced domestically.

The report does not explicitly name the current Labor government. Nonetheless, the results point to the pivotal role it is playing in facilitating the climate crisis, which endangers the health and lives of billions of people around the world, primarily the poor and working class.

Titled “Australia’s global fossil fuel carbon footprint,” the report was funded by the Australian Human Rights Institute of the University of New South Wales. Its primary aim was to determine the true climate impact of Australian fossil fuel production.

The report concluded that Australia is the third largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world, behind only Russia and the United States. The emissions from these exports—primarily coal and liquified natural gas (LNG)—released a collective 1.2 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2023. This is approximately 78 percent of total CO2 emissions attributable to fossils fuels produced by corporations in Australia, with the other 22 percent occurring from domestic burning of those fuels.

The CO2 emissions released after those fuels are burned in other countries actually meant that Australia ranked second in terms of climate change damage from fossil fuel exports. Australia trailed only Russia, a country with over five times the number of inhabitants.

This is largely due to the fact that coal, a particularly emissions-intensive fuel, is the primary export from Australia. Coal makes up 65 percent of the country’s total energy exports (with 29 percent from LNG, and the remaining 6 percent a mix of petroleum coke, crude oil, and liquefied petroleum gas).

This toxic record has lasted for decades. The report states: “From 1961 to 2023 Australia’s fossil fuel exports have been responsible for emitting 30 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.”

Far from decreasing, however, the emissions are growing. The report projected that current government policies, which continue these exports, would result in a further 15 billion tonnes of emissions by 2035. To put that another way, the study estimates that the next 11-year period will result in half as many CO2 emissions from fossil fuel exports as the previous 63-year period.