Fossil fuel interests have politicised climate action and slowed the transition. A trusted, science-led expert group could help galvanise public demand for change.

Temperature records continue to be broken, and governments continue to approve new fossil fuel projects. Politicians are failing the people; it’s time for change. We need to take the politics out of the debate and get the people to demand that governments take action to minimise the climate threat. For this to happen will first require a major communications campaign.

Politicisation of climate change has become a major impediment to the world successfully addressing the climate crisis. To address this, I propose the formation of an apolitical science-based expert group to obtain community support for calls on the Australian government to align its climate and energy policies with the science. To succeed in getting effective climate action, this strategy would have to be replicated in other countries. The Australian expert group could engage globally and aim to evolve into an international organisation.

With close to 90 per cent of global greenhouse gases coming from the extraction, processing, transportation and burning of fossil fuels, the only hope to avoid a climate catastrophe is to rapidly phase out these fuels.

But there still is major support for fossil fuels. A Banking on Climate Chaos report, published in June this year, reported that the world’s largest banks pledged $906 billion to fossil fuel companies in 2025, an increase of $64 billion from 2024. This financial........

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