Introduction by Croakey: Global media organisations are collaborating on a new project to highlight a “little-known fact about climate change” – that “an overwhelming majority of the world’s people want their governments to take stronger action”.
The year-long 89 Percent Project launches on 20 April with a week of focused coverage and activities. It is organised by the Covering Climate Now initiative (of which Croakey is a member).
The idea for the project “arose from a growing number of scientific studies finding that the vast majority of the human population – 80 to 89 percent – want governments to do more about climate change”, says Covering Climate Now.
“That mass sentiment has not been reflected in most news coverage, however. Instead, the prevailing narrative is one of denial, retreat and despair. This in turn might explain a second scientific finding: The global climate majority does not realise it is the majority; most of its members think their fellow citizens don’t agree.”
The 89 Percent Project is a timely intervention ahead of our upcoming federal election and comes as recent webinars and events highlight the urgency of climate action, as well as dangerous political agendas and unhealthy silences, as Alison Barrett reports.
Alison Barrett writes:
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s proposal to cut staff and funding from the public sector will impair climate action and Australia’s ability to respond to the escalating crisis if the Coalition is elected, climate leaders have warned.
“All of those mechanisms that keep Australians safe”, including long-range weather forecasts that help people prepare for what’s ahead, would be gutted under a Coalition Government, Greg Mullins AO AFSM told a La Trobe Ideas and Society public lecture this week.
Mullins, a Former Commissioner of Fire and Rescue New South Wales and a Climate Council Councillor, said “I bet you my bottom dollar if [the Coalition] get in, they’ll once again gut the climate research capabilities of CSIRO”.
He also predicted that a Coalition Government will “gut” the Bureau of Meteorology and the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).
Mullins said he dreads the election of a Dutton Government that will “turn the dial back” on so much, including the “gutting” of the public sector.
At Senate Estimates on 24 February, Vidoshi Jana, CEO of NEMA, said that if the 135 staff who were added to the agency in 2024-25 were removed, “it would have a huge impact on our ability” to provide services and the response needed in an emergency.
The concerns come amid warnings that the Trump Administration’s cuts to science in the United States and mass lay-offs at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will affect public safety globally, including in Australia. The Trump Administration is also undermining global climate action on other fronts.
The Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (AMOS) this week issued a statement raising concerns about the NOAA cuts and stressing the importance of ongoing investment in research, monitoring and prediction of the atmosphere and ocean.
NOAA provides global leadership in shaping ocean, fisheries, climate, space and weather policies, AMOS said.
Weather forecasts produced by NOAA and Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology rely upon critical monitoring facilities maintained by governments around the world and are built on fundamental knowledge and technology developed in partnership with the global scientific community.
“The atmosphere and oceans are globally connected and do not recognise political boundaries,” the AMOS statement said.
A wake-up call
Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization confirmed this week that 2024 “was likely the first calendar year to be more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial era”.
The WMO’s State of the Global Climate 2024 report shows that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are at the highest levels in the last 800,000 years and that each of the past eight years has set a new record for ocean heat content.
“Our planet is issuing more distress signals – but this report shows that limiting long-term global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius is still possible.
“Leaders must step up to make it happen – seizing the benefits of cheap, clean renewables for their people and economies – with new national climate plans due this year,” said António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General.
Celeste Saulo, Secretary-General of the WMO, added that “while a single year above 1.5°C of warming does not indicate that the long-term temperature goals of the Paris Agreement are out of reach, it is a wake-up call that we are increasing the risks to our lives, economies and to the planet”.
The report comes as residents of the NSW Northern Rivers continue to feel the consequences of ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred, including road damage affecting food and farming supply chains and floodwaters killing fish.
Treasurer Dr Jim Chalmers announced this week that the immediate costs from Alfred will be at least $1.2 billion.
Professor Robyn Eckersley, Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor in the Discipline of Political Science, School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, told the La Trobe lecture that with the market for insurance drying up, everyone will turn to governments for support – but damage costs are not being factored into future budget forecasts.
“We’re heading to a situation where some states may not…be able to provide the most basic services that citizens expect – which is to protect them from danger,” she said.
“And a democracy can’t function when governments can’t do that.”
Silence and denial
Eckersley told the lecture that both the Coalition and Labor are not announcing their 2035 emissions reductions targets – under the Paris Agreement – until after the election.
“They’re trying to put climate change off the political agenda of this election,” she said.
“At the end of the day, it’s not the science, it’s the politics – not the policy, but the politics – which will determine how much upward ratcheting of ambition we see in mitigation and climate finance, the mitigation and adaptation and all the other things that are on the agenda.”
She said it’s “not a good sign” that only 11 out of 183 countries have submitted their Nationally Determined Contributions by the 11 February 2025 deadline.
Eckersley called for everyone – whether it be the Teal Independents, the Greens or ordinary citizens – to put climate change back on the agenda this election.
Independent MP Zali Steggall released a Climate Resilience Plan this week, which includes $10 billion for a new Climate Resilience Fund – funded by phasing out the fuel tax credit for all industries except agricultural businesses.
It also calls for legislating independent National Climate Risk Assessments and Adaptation Plans every five years to embed a National Framework for Adaptation that ensures Australia is assessing, planning for and mitigating the impacts of climate-fuelled extreme weather.
Steggall has endorsed the All-Electric Healthy Hospitals Campaign, a coalition of over 100,000 health workers calling for $1.5 million in the Federal Budget for a feasibility study into climate-resilient energy systems to keep hospitals running during emergencies.
The coalition says the recent power outage to Gold Coast University Hospital during ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred emphasised the urgency of the matter.
“Hospitals can’t afford to gamble with power failures. That’s why these hospitals see the benefits of going all-electric, to ensure they have reliable, resilient energy when they need it most,” they said in a statement.
The campaign is endorsed by Doctors for the Environment Australia, Climate and Health Alliance, Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, Australian Federation of Medical Women, Australian Indigenous Doctors’ Association, Asthma Australia, and Dr Sophie Scamps, Dr Helen Haines, Dr Monique Ryan, Allegra Spender, David Pocock and Kylea Tink.
At the LaTrobe webinar, Mullins talked about the self-censorship he has seen in the emergency management sector, particularly during the recent wildfires in Los Angeles. Many of his former colleagues said it wasn’t a safe environment to speak publicly about the link between climate change and environmental disasters.
“Trump supporters are violent and horrible”, he said. When his colleagues have spoken up, they have been attacked and threatened.
Mullins said the media also didn’t make the connection that the LA fires were climate-driven, which is “really, really concerning”.
He also referred to the Federal Opposition’s recent threats to sack Matt Kean – Chair of the Climate Change Authority and former Minister for Energy of New South Wales – for criticising its nuclear energy plan.
The silence around climate change was a common theme at several public discussions over the past few weeks.
At a WOMADelaide Planet Talk event, author Tim Winton said we live in a culture of silence and denial of environmental history, activity and crisis, which has to be resisted, recognised and broken.
He referred to the recent marine heatwaves off the west coast of Australia causing mass fish deaths.
“A few weeks after that…[Ningaloo] started bleaching in this unprecedented and what feels almost catastrophic level of bleaching…all of which was foreseen, all of which was predicted, all which was known about. And, this is the result of business as usual, the story of silence,” he said.
Winton said he made the TV series on Ningaloo and wrote his 2024 release, Juice, as a “small part of breaking silence” and “dome of fear” – which are being influenced by powerful lobbyists.
In our democracy, “we elect [our representatives] to power”, Winton said.
“That’s the last they listen to us. The rest of the time, the people that they’re listening to are the lobbyists of corporations and business corporations.”
Speaking out
The great silence is not limited to climate change.
Organisations that receive funding from federal and state governments often feel “almost hamstrung not to speak out”, an election webinar hosted by the Stretton Institute at the University of Adelaide was told this week.
Susi Tegen, Chief Executive of the National Rural Health Alliance, said “that is a terrible situation to be in…and we need to make sure that that is called out”.
“If we do not stand up, you’re not giving others the permission and strength to do the same,” she said.
Professor Fran Baum AO, Professor of Health Equity at the Stretton Institute, added that there is currently a “battle inside universities in terms of academic freedom and maintaining the right to speak out as academics in areas in which you have expertise”.
Baum said the more people who speak out, the more protected everybody is.
Malcolm Balmaan, Manager of Policy and Advocacy for the Public Health Association of Australia, called on everyone to become active citizens and lobby governments for change.
“We are lobbyists of a kind…We cannot expect political parties to change course and correct all the things that we are frustrated that they have failed to do – despite the strengths of our arguments – if they are not beset by an active citizenship demanding that they do so,” he said.
Election priorities
Tegen said that policy and budget changes are “desperately needed” to support a fairer and more equitable society, but current inequities in rural healthcare are “deeply influenced” by policy power and the dynamics of political parties, which tend to favour densely populated urban centres.
This election, the NRHA is calling for a National Rural Health Strategy under the National Health Reform Agreement to coordinate federal, state and territory investment and service delivery for rural Australia, funded through a $1 billion National Rural Health Fund for blended health delivery payments and infrastructure.
The Alliance also calls for long-term funding of the National Rural Health Alliance.
Charmaine Cross, Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS), told the webinar its core election priority is to raise the rate of JobSeeker, Youth Allowance and parenting payment.
“In our point of view, this is the most important thing that the next government should do, and they should do it…as their first order of business,” she said.
“We know that if people have an adequate income, their health dramatically improves,” as seen during the early years of the pandemic when the Morrison Government doubled income support payments.
ACOSS also recommends:
- First Nations justice and self-determination, through establishing a process of truth-telling and treaties and funding and resourcing to achieve the targets under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap
- Making housing affordable for people with low incomes
- Invest in labour market programs including wage subsidies and VET places
- Increase investment in community service organisations
- A fairer tax system that supports services, safety nets and economic development
- Fair, fast and inclusive action on climate change.
Tan Nguyen, representing the National Oral Health Alliance, said the primary focus of the Alliance’s election priorities is around universal access to essential oral healthcare, calling for oral healthcare to be integrated into Medicare.
Addressing oral healthcare access for everyone “can provide a way to get people out of…the cycle of economic disadvantage”. Poor oral health leads to a lower ability and probability of getting employment, Nguyen said.
Balmaan told the webinar that “at election time, we have to simplify… The more things you try and get people’s attention on in the political space, the less attention you get to each one of them”.
The PHAA election platform has seven priorities:
- Invest in prevention, including implementing the actions in the National Preventive Health Strategy
- Action on obesity, including the legislation of the marketing of unhealthy food and beverages
- Invest in First Nations’ people’s health, including through providing ongoing funding for Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations
- Implement policies to address the drivers of climate change
- Establish an independent statutory Australian Centre for Disease Control by the end of 2025
- Universal dental and oral healthcare through Medicare
- Gambling reform.
Baum said the Stretton Institute is still working on its election statement, but will focus on urging the next Government to prioritise action on health inequities.
Further reading
- WMO: State of the Global Climate 2024
- The Saturday Paper: Cyclone Alfred and the real cost of Dutton’s public service cuts
- The Conversation: Flooding in the Sahara, Amazon tributaries drying and warming tipping over 1.5°C – 2024 broke all the wrong records
See Croakey’s archive of articles on the 2025 federal election and health
