The Coalition’s abandonment of net zero by 2050 marks a retreat from climate action, putting it at odds with public opinion and weakening Australia’s long-term response.

When last year the National and Liberal parties abandoned their commitment to ‘net zero by 2050’, they did more than re-set their policies on climate change. They weakened them by telegraphing their lack of enthusiasm for the renewables transition.

‘Net zero by 2050’ had seemingly become bi-partisan, a marker of a national Australian consensus that climate change was important, problematic and needed to be dealt with at least to a degree and with us playing a part. It created a sort of base-line beginning, not bold or striking out with world-leading verve, but nonetheless establishing a base to be built upon. The conservatives’ abandonment of it felt like a severe blow to an important hope.

Ever since, and now with Matt Canavan as Nationals’ leader, there has been a doubling down on the new position. Canavan sees net zero as a barrier to his re-industrialisation ‘revolution’, a sacred cow that must be slaughtered if economic progress is to be achieved. Net zero, he said last week at the National Press Club, is madness. So, then, must be the continuing transition to renewables.

For Canavan, economic growth and national security are everything and bound closely together, and if environmental concerns get in the way of those things they cannot be........

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