Dr Wesley Morgan

I am in the Solomon Islands this week to observe the talks. I saw firsthand that Australia clearly has its work cut out in its quest to lead regional security – and our climate credibility is key.

Hosting the United Nations climate summit is a major opportunity to safeguard our region’s security and ensure Australia’s economic future as a clean energy powerhouse.

Japan is financing gas exploitation in Australia, locking our fast-growing and energy-hungry region into much longer reliance on dirty fossil fuels and questionable carbon capture plans.

The current visit to Australia by China’s Premier Li Qiang may have taken the heat out of recent tensions between the two nations. But Australia remains embroiled with China in a tussle for influence in the Pacific – a fight in which climate ambition is key.

Japan has a huge need for energy. But it can get it without resorting to fossil fuels. Japan could partner with Australia to supply critical minerals and green metals for batteries and renewables, green ammonia for fertilisers and industry, and green hydrogen for transport and industry.

As we power past gas, Australia can meet our own energy needs at all times and help our trading partners do the same. If we don’t there’s serious economic and environmental consequences.

Without immediate action, we are at grave risk of crossing irreversible tipping points in the Earth’s climate system. Yet there are reasons for hope.

Having put up its hand to host the UN climate talks in 2026 in partnership with Pacific island countries, Australia has a lot of work to do.

The federal government has announced an extra A$150 million for climate finance – including $100 million for the Pacific to help protect its people, housing and infrastructure from the escalating impacts of global warming.

Hot on the heels of trips to Washington and Beijing, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is now in the Cook Islands for the Pacific Island Forum. There, he will aim to strengthen relations with Pacific countries and reaffirm Australia’s place as a security partner of choice.

As our climate changes, driven by the unchecked burning of fossil fuels, our seas are transforming before our eyes. Put simply: the climate crisis is an ocean crisis.

A new pact between Australia and the United States highlights the pivotal role our nation’s mineral wealth will play in the clean energy transition. But it also underscores the massive effort now required from Australia.

As the climate crisis worsens, we must do more. Climate change is a threat. Maybe even the threat. We need to use every tool we have to tackle it – including our diplomats.

You’ve probably heard about Australia’s rubbery offset schemes and questions of integrity. But there’s an even more fundamental problem.

The world is undergoing a new Industrial Revolution. Driven by an urgent need to tackle the climate crisis, and grasp the economic advantages of renewable energy, this switch away from fossil fuels is reshaping the global economy with major implications and opportunities for Australian industry.

The world is slowly but surely shifting away from fossil fuels. When historians look back, they will likely see the 2015 Paris agreement as the key pivot point. It achieved a global consensus on climate action and set the goal for nations to decarbonise by mid-century.

As the COP27 climate talks got underway in Egypt this week, climate and energy minister Chris Bowen announced Australia would bid to co-host the annual United Nations climate summit with Pacific island nations in 2026.

Officials from nearly 200 nations are gathering in Sharm-El-Sheikh, Egypt, for the 27th United Nations climate change conference known as COP27. Multiple global crises threaten to overshadow the summit, but the task at COP27 over the next two weeks is more urgent than ever.

Extreme weather records have been broken on every continent on Earth in the 12 months since the last United Nations global climate summit, according to a new report from the Climate Council.

Australia last week moved to tackle the climate crisis when Federal Parliament passed Labor’s climate bill. But the new law is just the first step. Over the next eight years to 2030, we must get on a steep trajectory of emissions reductions.

Powerup is a set of ten energy gamechangers that will help get Australia on track to tackle both the climate crisis and our cost-of living crisis.

This year’s Pacific Islands Forum marked the beginning of a more dangerous era as Pacific leaders tried to find common responses to both the climate crisis and sharpening geostrategic competition.

Prime minister Anthony Albanese is hoping his government’s more ambitious climate policy will help reset Pacific relations next week.

The record-breaking and relentless deluge that has flooded towns and cities in Queensland and New South Wales is one of the most extreme disasters in Australian history, and the devastation is wide-ranging. Climate change is intensifying extreme rainfall.

Our future depends on urgent and decisive action to respond to the climate crisis in the 2020s, as scientific consensus makes clear our window to avoid catastrophe is closing. This briefing unpacks the key takeaways for Australia from the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, in particular the urgent need for Australia to catch up with the rest of the world.