The revelation that BHP cancelled and delayed commitments to act on the climate crisis should be a wake-up call.

It matters in its own right: millions of tonnes of additional heat-trapping pollution will go into the atmosphere, adding to climate harm and making Australia’s climate targets that much harder to reach.

It also matters for the influence the world’s biggest miner could have in accelerating use of technology needed to cut pollution from major industrial operations.

BHP is not alone among its peers in stepping back its climate action. Rio Tinto has slashed spending on projects to reduce emissions and disbanded its specialist decarbonisation unit. Other major corporations have either jumped in fear of Donald Trump or used his rise as an excuse to drop climate commitments.

But the scale of BHP’s reversal, revealed in documents leaked to the Guardian and the ABC, is significant.

It shelved the first big investment planned under its decarbonisation plan – a huge solar farm – after it was approved and funded by its board. A much larger solar, wind and battery development that would have run most of its inland operations in northern Western Australia has been delayed for at least five years.

BHP has also doubled down on using diesel-powered trucks, despite a promise to switch to a fleet of electric vehicles running on renewable energy. Internal documents acknowledge this is inconsistent with its climate pledges.

Making promises to cut emissions is the easy part. Designing and spending up on plans to........

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