By The Diplomat | Created at 2026-07-30 09:45:25 | Updated at 2026-08-03 18:48:54
5 days ago
We live in a rapidly evolving risk landscape. The conflict in the Middle East has not resolved and its effects will last for months, if not years. The Iran-U.S. clashes have transformed into something that strains supply chains, reduces crop yields, rewrites regional politics, and concentrates attention on near-term stability at the expense of the big global challenges.
The decisions by the Trump administration to retreat from the commitments and frameworks of global climate action have created a leadership void that is felt most acutely not in Washington or Brussels, but in the low-lying islands of the Pacific, in the Australian communities already contending with extreme fire seasons and more intense floods and cyclones, and in every boardroom and cabinet room where 30-year infrastructure decisions are being made in the face of deepening uncertainty.
The decline of America as a global leader represents a startling shift in the security space Australia has occupied. The Trump administration’s attack on international conventions and relationships, and its rejection of values that many Australians hold dear, requires Australia to rethink how it exercises leadership and influence in our region.
As someone who has spent over two decades arguing – from inside defense and intelligence institutions as much as outside them – that climate disruption is the most significant strategic threat Australia faces, this is a moment for clear-eyed reckoning.
The world has become more dangerous, and climate disruption adds to the danger. The too-slow pace of the energy transition and faster-than-forecast climate impacts are escalating risks.
For the better part of my career in uniform, climate change was treated as a secondary issue in defense planning – something that belonged to the environment portfolio, not to the strategic one.
We now have more than two decades of analyses – from defense and intelligence agencies in Australia and across allied nations, from the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group, and from the assessments of Australia’s Treasury department and Productivity Commission – all pointing to the same conclusion. The risks of climate disruption are not linear, but compounding and cascading. When one system fails – whether that is a power grid, a water catchment, an agricultural region, or a community’s capacity for self-recovery – it puts pressure on every connected system.
We must redesign critical systems to make those systems more resilient, more sovereign, and less vulnerable to the shocks that are coming.
The choices Australia makes in the next five years about the pace and shape of the energy transition will determine not only our electricity prices, but our strategic position – our credibility in the region, our leverage in international coalitions, and our capacity to lead rather than follow. That is why I no longer think of the energy transition primarily as climate mitigation policy but as nation-building.
Australia’s energy transition broke records in 2025. Renewables generated almost half our electricity. Battery storage capacity tripled. This performance is a genuine achievement.
The pipeline of projects is real, but the delivery gap between ambition and projects on the ground remains large.
Policy consistency cannot stop at renewable energy. A nation cannot simultaneously ask this industry to build the clean-energy economy of the future, while continuing to expand the industries driving climate disruption.
Renewables are half the story, but phasing out fossil fuels is the other, and from that standpoint Australian policy is contradictory, perhaps even delusional.
The Australian government has a clear policy of talking about and championing renewable energy, while avoiding, wherever possible, any discussion of climate impacts and how Australian coal and gas, including new licenses, are helping drive the world toward an unliveable planet.
Our climate minister, Chris Bowen, has said Australia will not use its role as president of the negotiations at the 2026 COP31 climate summit to facilitate an agreement to curtail coal or gas exports, declaring in a recent media interview that it is “not on the agenda” under his leadership.
The Australian Security Leaders Climate Group previously documented how the government has found confronting climate impacts and their security consequences simply “too hot to handle.”
Whatever short-term income fossil fuel exports generate is overwhelmed by the deaths, destruction, and decline in human security caused by accelerating climate disruption. These costs will continue accumulating for decades and be borne by communities, governments and future generations.
The World Health Organization’s estimate that extreme heat has claimed more than 200,000 lives in Europe since 2022, with millions more affected physically and mentally, is an example of the human consequences already unfolding.
It is a consistent government practice to avoid discussion of the science, the impacts, and Australia’s outsized contribution to them.
We see a similar pattern in the United States, where a faction of Congressional Democrats have embraced what has been called “climate hushing” – scaling back discussion of climate change and shifting the conversation toward energy affordability.
In times of crisis, especially when the future security of the nation is at stake, leadership means confronting the hardest problems head on, as Australia has done during times of war and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Taking difficult issues off the agenda does not demonstrate leadership. It demonstrates hesitation. Sweeping problems under the carpet exhibits weakness. And outright denial looks like cowardice to me, wherever it comes from.
We cannot credibly claim to be addressing the climate emergency while simultaneously increasing the very emissions driving it. Australia’s fossil fuel export trajectory is like trying to empty a bathtub while leaving the tap running. Every new fossil fuel project and every expansion in exports cancels out part of the global progress being delivered by the clean energy industry.
We are not short of technology. We are increasingly not short of public support. What we are short of is institutions willing to hold the line once the smoke clears and the cameras move on.
