The former New South Wales fire chief Greg Mullins has accused the Albanese government of an “incomprehensible” decision to continue approving new coalmines despite accepting global heating is adding to bushfire risk.
In an interview on Tuesday, Mullins – a member of the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action group – likened Australia’s continued export of fossil fuels to selling drugs, after he delivered a briefing to the crossbench about the coming bushfire season.
Mullins, the Greens and independent MPs including Sophie Scamps are calling for more decisive action on global heating, including tearing up fossil fuel subsidies.
The International Monetary Fund recently calculated fossil fuels cost the Australian budget $65bn a year – although most of the cost ($55.6bn) is indirect subsidies for failing to recoup the environmental and health costs from polluters.
Earlier in September, the federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, approved an expansion of the Gregory Crinum coalmine in central Queensland, which produces metallurgical coal used in steelmaking.
Coalmine expansions and developments approved in Australia so far this year are expected to add nearly 150m tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere over their lifetimes.
Climate scientists and bushfire experts have warned the country faces an elevated risk of bushfires this spring and summer compared with the past three wet years, with a predicted El Niño likely to deliver drier and hotter conditions.
Mullins said a degree of warming was “baked into the system … until 2050” but what happened after was “entirely reliant” on what the government does to reduce emissions today.
“If they do nothing, the temperature will keep going up. The fires, the storms, floods will get worse.
“But if we drive down emissions quickly, we’ve got a chance of stabilising the temperature, and this is worldwide, but Australia must do its bit [to stabilise it] … and then eventually drive it down.”
“Selling our coal [and] opening new coalmines, to me, is incomprehensible. It’s a bit like saying look, ‘I’m off the drugs … but I have to sell drugs to my mates to maintain my lifestyle.’ And we’ve got this addiction to fossil fuels.”
Mullins called for fossil fuel subsidies “to go to communities in Australia to safeguard them against fires, floods, cyclones, heatwaves and droughts”.
Mullins said that unlike some members of the Morrison government, Labor “understands the problem of climate change” but its decisions on coal mines were “incongruous”.
Earlier in September Plibersek defended the latest coal mine approval by noting the government had “to make decisions in accordance with the facts and the national environment law”, and that the mine would be covered by the safeguard mechanism climate policy.
“Under the safeguard mechanism, the minister for climate change and energy manages how the carbon pollution of projects are consistent with Australia’s transition to net zero,” Plibersek told Guardian Australia on Tuesday.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has assured Australia’s trading partners such as Japan and South Korea that they could “count on Australia as a stable and reliable provider of energy, metals and minerals”.
On Tuesday Tania Constable, the chief executive of the Minerals Council, told its minerals week conference that “the world cannot get to net zero emissions without the minerals industry”.
She called on the government to guarantee that its climate and energy policies will “put business front and centre in delivering emissions reductions and energy security while not compromising the economy”, including retaining the fuel tax credit in its current form.
Mullins said Australia was going into a summer “unlike the last three”, when “very wet” La Niña events resulted in “very little” preventative burning being able to be done. “Prolific growth” of vegetation had added “fire fuel across the landscape”, he said.
“We’re going into a spring that’s warmer and drier than average.
“We’ve looked at the northern hemisphere … [and] the possibility after a warm, dry spring that things will be tinder dry and we could get really serious fires.
“We saw after Maui what they call a flash drought, and then very strong winds, and Maui was decimated.”
Here’s why we need to move more quickly to cut CO2 emissions rather than propping up coal fired power plants. Attending a briefing from fmr NSW Fire & Rescue Commissioner Greg Mullins. We’re heading into another dry hot fire-risk summer. pic.twitter.com/ArF1fcDb1l
— Allegra Spender (@spenderallegra) September 5, 2023
Scamps said the government must increase its emissions reduction target of 43% by 2030 and consider the emissions of fossil fuel exports, such as gas from the Beetaloo basin, through a “climate trigger” in environmental approvals.
“These don’t come under our own targets because they don’t take into account … emissions that we export,” she said. “We only have to take into account the emissions that we create when we’re mining for those fossil fuels, not what happens when they’re burned.”
The government is also being lobbied this week by a group of eight bushfire survivors in Canberra who are due to meet the energy and climate change minister, Chris Bowen, and his assistant minister, Jenny McAllister.
Serena Joyner, the chief executive of the group, Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action, said the scenes of fires in the northern hemisphere – in particular in Greece and Canada – had been distressing.
Joyner, whose husband Lachlan is a volunteer firefighter in the Blue Mountains, said the prospect of another high-risk summer for bushfires was “quite scary”.
“We don’t know what we will be facing this summer. All our members are really worried,” she said.
Joyner’s group is asking the government to pause any further approvals for fossil fuel projects until promised reforms to environment laws, including the formation of an independent environmental agency, are completed.
“The government knows the current framework is not up to scratch and they have promised reform,” she said. “While we wait, fossil fuel projects are still getting approved and that undermines our promises on emissions reduction.
“These projects are not being adequately assessed for their climate impacts. It scares us to know that we have this summer coming and we don’t feel like we are moving fast enough.”
