The countries committed to permanently ending fossil fuel use now far outnumber those against. Their problem? Their chief organising conference, the 30-year-old COP conferences, comes with vetoes from the petro-states. This year, 1,600 fossil industry lobbyists attended, and they managed to get any mention of fossil fuels scrubbed from the final agreement.
This ridiculous state of affairs can’t continue, and this is a classic move to break the deadlock. Sideline COP & the petrostates, by creating an alternative, they don’t have power in.
The mining oligarchs (Rinehart, Palmer and such) bet big on the conservatives winning power and undoing the energy transition Trump-fashion at the last election, and lost spectacularly. The conservatives are out of power, and it appears to be for a long time, so the chickens are coming home to roost. The government is by no means a radical one (regardless of what some of the more unhinged propaganda from the fossil-funded right says), though as the markets themselves are leaning towards renewables on economic grounds alone, they’re trying to balance this transition with keeping the economy stable. Hence officially promoting the transition and funding decarbonisation of energy whilst still approving coal mines.
It’s hard for Australia to quit those coal export dollars. We hardly use the stuff ourselves, too expensive to maintain the furnaces compared to solar and wind.
I note that although it was the conservative side that hobbled the mineral resource rent tax, neither side restored that (nor the similar tax on liquid and gas fossil fuels)
Uhhh what? Coal is is still like half of all our energy generation.