Spring in my little corner of Tasmania began as I should always expect it to – unexpectedly. A bit of rain after a dry August, then a decent fall of snow that went as quickly as it came under bright sunshine, then back to rain again. The sort of capricious weather that keeps us on our toes.
We’re switched on to weather here. It’s a kind of reality anchor, whereby we separate the real from the fake. It’s possibly also why so many people I know continue to beaver away at climate policy in the face of near-total indifference from both the Liberal government and its Labor opposition.
“Tasmania’s renewable energy agenda is the most meaningful thing our state can do in the climate change space,” said energy minister Nick Duigan while announcing on Friday that the state’s Energy Saver Loan Scheme (ESLS) was ending a month earlier than planned because demand had exceeded available funds. Except that it’s not “meaningful”. It’s a cop-out.
Solar installer Rob Manson was clearly irate over the decision to end the ESLS to focus on large-scale renewable power and the $5 billion Marinus undersea power project, telling the ABC, “if we took all of that Marinus money and we put solar on every rooftop in Tasmania and added a battery, we probably wouldn’t need Marinus.”
He has a point. It’s all very well to talk about meaningful things to do, but with funding resources as scarce as they are, the government’s “renewable energy agenda” isn’t worth much if it’s not well targeted, and with home solar you can at least see a rapid return on investment.
But there’s a more telling point of criticism. Tasmania most important response to climate change is as plain as the nose on the minister’s face, if only his government and its predecessors – not to mention its federal counterpart – were in touch with the reality that is man-made climate change.
It’s simply this: increasing the take-up of renewable energy is only a policy means, not an end goal. The end goal of climate policy must be to lower the amount of carbon released to the air when petrol, diesel and natural gas – the fuels derived from fossil deposits – are burned in our cars, factories and homes. There’s a big difference.
Through the first week of spring a group of dedicated climate experts – colleagues of mine on the advisory group Climate Tasmania – completed a submission to the government’s independent review of the 2008 Climate Change (State Action) Act in time for the September 7 deadline.
“The Climate Change Act has failed” is their blunt verdict, adding that it has served only to create “the illusion of great activity while not requiring much actual change”. They go on: “The real and present danger of climate change” calls for a very different Act.
Climate Tasmania proposes a new or radically augmented Act with provision for long-term custodianship of sequestered carbon in native forests, separate reporting of direct emissions and sequestration, and total emission reduction targets with timelines for each economic sector aiming for near-zero emissions by 2050.
“The best way to protect current and future Tasmanians from an increasingly dangerous climate is by leadership and by setting a strong example,” argues Climate Tasmania. An effective climate change response must include the rapid and complete phase-out of fossil fuel use, with a clear, legislated mechanism to manage this, administered by an independent statutory authority.
The Rockliff government’s own data, from the 2025 Tasmanian Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report, shows that emissions from all energy sectors except land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) are virtually unchanged over 35 years from 1990. The government’s climate leadership claim is based on a dramatic decline in native forest logging, the major LULUCF component.
We hear a lot about how technology will solve the climate crisis, but atmospheric carbon levels keep rising and show no sign of stopping. Scientists are desperate for the public to grasp the true gravity of the crisis. But they are powerless to stop governments simply changing the narrative, as the Rockliff government has done repeatedly.
The 17-year history of the so-called “State Action” Act shows that it has served mainly to sugarcoat government inaction. That sugarcoating includes the trumpeted 2022 amendment to the Act mandating net-zero emissions from 2030, but that is no more than what has already been happening for years.
There is every reason for Tasmanians to feel sceptical about the current review of our state’s climate laws. The ball is now in Jeremy Rockliff’s court: prove us wrong.