Climate-Washing, SLAPP-Fights & Green-On-Green Action: No Court Shaming Here!

Let Me Sum Up

Episode Notes

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After recent frolics in pre-and-post election climate speculation in the US and UK, your intrepid hosts turn their gaze to developments closer to home and ponder, could China be peaking its emissions early? We discuss this excellent article in Carbon Brief with data from respected China-watcher Lauri Myllyvirta. The short of it? It’s a complicated stew with a GIGANTIC cup of renewable energy growth, a generous dollop of post-COVID energy demand and a worrying scoop of coal-to-chemicals growth.

Our main paper

Your intrepid hosts cross examine a bumper new report Global trends in climate litigation: 2024 snapshot from Joana Setzer and Catherine Higham from the London School of Economics' Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. This was a fascinating read on the many and varied approaches not-for-profits, governments and corporates are taking to litigating climate action, climate inaction and climate washing! Warning: contains SLAPP fights and green-on-green action.

One more things

Luke opens with some feedback from friend of the pod David McEwen. David thought we missed a trick around Frankie’s suggestion that it would take a while to replace budget revenue from fossil fuels and helpfully provided a link to an excellent paper from Paul J. Burke at the ANU Tax and Transfer Policy Institute which points out that our fossil fuel industry delivers <3% of combined state/territory and federal revenue. It shows the largest dependencies are coal royalties in QLD (Tennant has seen the ads to prove it!) and the federal fuel excise. Fair cop, we say, but even 3% would take some work to replace! Thanks for the support.

Frankie’s One More Thing is: a shout out for the FixIt Chicks, Jenny Edwards (notable energy efficiency expert and retrofit queen) and Lish Fejer (ABC journo and fabulous climate communicator) who’ve grown a cult following on their excellent insta full of handy reels on energy saving tips and tricks for the home. Love your work!

Tennant’s One More Thing is: a bold claim that the government’s nature positive reforms - even though they’ve been split into different stages with the truly difficult EPBC Act reform put off until after election - appear to be going nowhere fast! Stakeholders on all sides are not happy and things aren’t looking too good ahead of Australia hosting an international biodiversity summit.

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