Telling it like it is
The Convenor of Lighter Footprints, Jenny Smithers, started off the 2025 Kooyong Candidates Forum with a brief overview of the state of the climate.
“My professional life has been working as a GP, so no surprise, my first message is from the medical world,” Jenny said.
“Some of you may have heard of one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals, The Lancet.” The Lancet’s position is:
“Climate change is the greatest global health threat facing the world in the 21st century, but it is also the greatest opportunity to redefine the social and environmental determinants of health.”
Lancet Countdown Report 2024
Jenny continued to detail findings about rising CO2 levels and temperature increases. “You will have heard that the last 10 years have been the hottest years on record, and that 2024 was the hottest year ever on record.”
Our global temperatures are rising, on land and sea, and in Australia. We need to take urgent action
This graph shows the global mean temperature above the 1850 to 1900 average and it relates to the time period 1850 to 2024
“You can see, even in the last 18 years since the first Kooyong Candidate Forum in 2007, there has been a significant uptick in the global mean temperature,” Jenny said.
“It is not good when your doctor looks worried when they are talking to you about your health.
Well, the climate scientists are extremely worried about the sharp rise in the global mean temperature. Temperatures are rising faster than expected.”
Jenny Smithers
Greenhouse gases are driving temperature increases
Jenny continued: “You all know that the world is getting hotter because greenhouse gases in our atmosphere are trapping heat.” As well as CO2, methane is also a powerful greenhouse gas, 80x worse than CO2 over a 20 year period, 28x worse over 100 years. Methane is a significant contributor to the accelerating climate crisis. Methane is the biggest component of household gas and the gas we export overseas.
It turns out that humans are more powerful than the great orbital cycles that drive the ice ages. The Milankovitch cycles have been beaten by our fossil fuel profligacy, and the rise in CO2 is actually accelerating – we owe our children a liveable planet.
Jenny showed NASA’s graph of rising CO2. “This graph shows the level of CO2 in the atmosphere from 800,000 years ago to today.”
“How do we know what the CO2 level was 800,000 years ago?”
“The measurements are taken using CO2 concentration from bubbles trapped in East Antarctic ice cores.
The most recent measurements shown in red are taken directly from air samples. In Feb 2025 the concentration had risen to 427 parts per million at Mauna Loa Observatory.”
Jenny Smithers
Jenny noted the broken horizontal dashed line at 300 parts per million which had not been breached for millennia until 1911.
Can we tell this story in five minutes?
The Kooyong Candidate Forum working group decided that it was important to commence with a brief update regarding the climate science.
All to be done within 5 minutes.
Well, it could be done in less than 30 seconds, said Jenny, in just a couple of statements.
“It is getting hotter quickly, the climate systems are disrupted and the world needs to stop putting anymore greenhouse gases into our atmosphere and immediately protect and enhance our natural earth systems, our forests, woodlands, grasslands, coastlines and ocean to allow carbon to be reabsorbed. Unless we do this, our civilisation is likely to end within a century.”
Jenny Smithers
However, the challenge is that to convey that information “so forcefully and as a pile on people are overwhelmed” Jenny said, “and turn off.”
“So I was very grateful for the help of several people from Lighter Footprints who made suggestions of information to convey to people and slowly build the case for the urgent action needed.”
“As a committed climate action campaigner I find that I need to practise cognitive dissonance every day to stay calm to be able to do what I can to ensure climate action is accelerated.”
Jenny Smithers
Fossil fuels into the atmosphere
We cannot keep putting more CO2 nor other greenhouse gases, especially highly warming methane (‘natural’ gas), into our atmosphere. The IEA now states that methane is responsible “for 30% of the current rise in global temperature” and its concentration in the atmosphere is rising – an increase of 20% in 20 years according to the CSIRO.
What is very clear is that our temperatures continue to rise, and the rise is accelerating. The anomalies differ according to the dataset, the type of averaging, and over which period
Whatpart do Australians play in contributing to climate pollution?
In 2022, Australia was the fourth largest fossil fuel exporter.
This graph shows domestic CO2 emissions in 2022 minus the landclearing loophole (LULUCF), the grey bar above the line, and compares it to exported CO2 emissions, the red bar below the line.
Cuurenlty Australia’s global fossil fuel carbon footprint is more than three times larger than its domestic footprint, according to Climate Analytics.
“Australia has a global carbon footprint that far exceeds its economic size and population – and is responsible for around 4.5% of global fossil carbon dioxide emissions, with 80% of those emissions coming from its fossil fuel exports.”
Climate Analaytics 2024
The International Energy Agency has clearly said there should be no new fossil fuel development if the world is to limit warming to 1.5°C – the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal. Yet Australia continues to approve new fossil fuel exploration and production, and in 2024 Climate Analytics found that we were second only to Russia for exported emissions from fossil fuels, and we are now the third biggest fossil exporter, after Russia and the US.
The International Energy Agency’s landmark report detailing pathways to net zero stated that there could be no more new coal and gas projects if we were to meet our climate goals
“If governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas and coal, from now – from this year.”
Faith Birol, IEA Executive Director, 2023
This next slide is produced by Climate Action Tracker, Jenny explained.
Climate Action Tracker is an independent scientific project that tracks government climate action and measures it against the globally agreed Paris Agreement aim of “holding warming well below 2C, and pursuing efforts to limit warming to 1.5C”. You can check out Climate Action Tracker’s entry on Australia here.
This is a simplified version of Climate Action Tracker’s graphic representation of Australia’s progress on climate action with rating ‘Insufficient’
This slide depicts Australia’s domestic emissions over time, the likely outcome (dangerous), with projections of what course Australia’s emissions need to be to achieve better outcomes by the end of the century. Note that the blue line which charts Australia’s actual domestic emissions is in the orange zone of ‘insufficient’ compared to Australia’s 1.5C fair share.
The green line charts where Australia’s emissions would need to be for 1.5C compatability, assuming our nation plays its part in keeping the climate safe.
In other words, even though our emissions are officially dropping (mostly thanks to the landclearing loophole we are allowed to use in calculating our emissions), in reality they would have to drop much, much faster for a safer outcome, let alone our fair share given our historical emissions.
The slide is taking account only of our domestic CO2 emissions and not Australia’s exported fossil fuels that will become CO2 emissions.
That land clearing accounting loophole…
The Howard government negotiated an ‘out’ for Australia at Kyoto in 1997, allowing us to use a very high baseline year on land clearing and claim that because we have reduced emissions since in the LULUCF sector that our overall emissions have reduced (when without LULUCF they hardly have). Check out this explainer from The Australia Institute.
There are lies, damn lies and LULUCF – Australia’s accounting loophole allows us to say “Australia’s annual emissions to June this year are 24.5% below what they were in the year to June 2005” when it’s actually 1.2%.
Our children deserve a safe climate future
Are we on track to keep our climate safe?
At present the answer is no.
A rise of 3 degrees celsius by the end of this century is not safe.
Accelerating the shift to renewables is the first, easiest thing we should do
Australia could be on track, because the amount of renewable energy with storage is growing.
“Rapid conversion of our electricity to renewables will give us time to manage the emissions from other sectors.”
Jenny Smithers
The share of clean energy in the electricity market is growing, and renewables is the fastest way to displace coal and gas and to lower emissions
According to the Australian Energy Market Operator, “Growth in distributed PV output and reduced coal availability saw renewable sources reaching a record 46%
share of the overall NEM supply mix (in Q4 2024), with the contribution of coal-fired generation dipping below 50% for the first time.”
“We have not a moment to lose, and every action we take now gives our children and their children a better climate future”, Jenny said.
“You are probably familiar with this statement by American environmentalist and author Bill Mc Kibben, that winning slowly is the same as losing.”
We have to plant walnut trees, and work to benefit our children at our cost now
Climate action will improve our national security
The final slide is a statement of the key findings from the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group report May 2024.
The Australian Security Leaders Climate Group aim to reframe and examine climate change from a security perspective
“Some of the most trusted members in our society- doctors, scientists and the military- are telling us we are in trouble.
We need to listen to those voices.”
Jenny Smithers
Thinking forward, thinking of others
Jenny strongly believes that Lighter Footprints’ role to educate, advocate and bring people together to find solutions to the climate crisis is vital.
“It was a privilege to have the attention of over 500 people in the Hawthorn town hall as I gave the very brief outline of the state of the climate and Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. The audience listened and I guess shared my feeling of dread about the future that our children and their children face, not to mention all the other living organisms on our earth.”
Jenny said that she was buoyed by the applause at the end of her climate science update and was delighted to introduce 16-year-old Kooyong student Ivy Sheng who described her awakening to the climate crisis, her four years of being associated with the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, and her plea that residents think about climate when they vote this election.