'Labor Asleep on Climate' as Aus coal and gas exports destroy the future
Extinction Rebellion Australia, 23 Sept 2025
Protesters across the country came out in pyjamas outside MP offices to expose the consequences of Labor's disastrously weak emissions reduction targets and approval of new fossil fuel projects.
Actions took place in Sydney/Gadigal land, Magan-djin/Brisbane, Walyalup/Fremantle, Naarm/Melbourne, Central Victoria, Tarndanya/Adelaide, Gimuy/Cairns, and Nipaluna/Hobart.
Labor's feeble emission reduction target of 62-70% by 2035 lets fossil fuel giants keep polluting while the rest of us pay the price.
Just days before the announcement, Labor approved an extension to one of the largest fossil fuel export projects in the world, the North West Shelf. Labor has approved over 28 new coal and gas projects in its first term.
With the announcement of a 2035 target that fails to meet Australia's Paris Climate commitments - it's clear that Labor is bed in with the fossil fuel industry.
The recently released National Climate Risk Assessment (NCRA) - while terrifying - downplays the real risks. The NCRA shows what’s at stake:
- Warming in Australia has already reached 1.5°C.
- Heat-related deaths in Sydney and Darwin could quadruple.
- Disasters could cost $40 billion a year by 2050.
- Our health systems face “significant potential for loss of life and strain.
It's about the rest of the world as well as Australia.
“Coal and gas exports from Australia are playing a major role in destroying the world’s climate, with devastating consequences for all the systems underpinning the security, wellbeing and prosperity of Australians,” said Richard Denniss, Executive Director of The Australia Institute.
“Approving new fossil fuel exports is destroying the future. It isn’t just a betrayal of our Pacific neighbours, it is a betrayal of all Australians, putting the profits of foreign-owned fossil fuel corporations ahead of our wellbeing, security and prosperity.”
KEY FACTS from The Australia Institute article, Devastating climate risk assessment shows fossil fuel exports must end:
- Australia is the second largest fossil fuel exporter and fifth largest fossil fuel producer in the world.Emissions from Australia’s fossil fuel exports are around 1.15 billion tonnes CO2e annually, greater than the emissions of all countries except China, the United States, India and Russia.
- Australia is expanding fossil fuel exports with around 100 new fossil fuel projects under development.
- Nearly a fifth of Australia’s domestic emissions now come from sending fossil fuels overseas.
- The 45-year extension of Woodside’s North West Shelf gas export terminal, approved by the Australian government last Friday, will add around 90 million tonnes of emissions to the atmosphere, equivalent to opening 12 new coal power stations.
- The Australian government gives most of the gas exported from Australia global oil and gas giants for free.
- No gas export project has ever paid Petroleum Resource Rent tax (PRRT) and the government collects more revenue from HECS than the PRRT.
- 99.7% of Australians do not work in the oil and gas industry.
IT'S TIME TO WAKE UP!
Even if Labor's emissions reductions targets were more realistic, it's clear that emissions reductions alone cannot keep us below (or return us to) +1.5C.