The sham of Australia’s climate change policy has been made clear in the past two weeks. No, not nuclear power. Last Friday, while everyone was racing down nuclear-powered rabbit holes, the environment department (led by the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek) approved a coal seam gas pipeline in Queensland. This approval “has effect until 30 June 2069”. And on Tuesday the department approved the Atlas stage 3 gas project in Queensland out to June 2080.

Those dates are rather beyond 2050 when we’re supposed to be at net zero emissions. They are also when temperatures will be well over 2C above the preindustrial average.

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The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report suggests business as usual would see a 3.2C degree increase in temperature by 2100. This is roughly in line with the trend increase since the turn of the century.

Joëlle Gergis in her Quarterly Essay Highway to Hell notes that under this scenario temperatures in Australia rise by as much a 4.4C. But that’s if things don’t get worse. Under a “high-emissions scenario”, temperatures by the end of this century will likely rise between 3.2C and 5.6C.

And a high-emissions scenario is one in which governments keep approving new gas and coalmines.

This is the ghastly horror of the nuclear power debate. It’s a faux argument about what might happen in (let’s be generous) 25 years, rather than about what is happening today (or last Friday).

The Aemo’s new integrated system plan also brings this to the fore. Australia needs more renewables to reduce our emissions now and replace coal-fire powered........

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