There’s an old proverb that progressives seem to have forgotten: more haste, less speed.

In our race toward Net Zero, we are learning it the hard way. Governments are hurling money, regulation, and rhetoric at the problem as if urgency alone could substitute for competence. But the faster we run, the rougher the road becomes, and the less likely we are to reach the destination intact.

The transition to clean energy has taken on the tempo of a political campaign rather than a technological evolution.

Every government wants to reach Net Zero first, as though climate virtue were an Olympic event. Yet haste has never been the hallmark of innovation. Did the first industrial revolution happen because Westminster legislated it? No. It was the fruit of confidence, ingenuity, and the space to breathe.

Today’s revolution is being choked by its own haste. From Europe’s energy crisis to Australia’s green megaproject blowouts, we’re seeing what happens when governments try to outshine physics and markets.

Look at our own backyard.

Snowy 2.0 was meant to be the engineering jewel of the renewable age. Instead, it’s a sinkhole of cost overruns, delays, and design problems, the price of a promise made before preparation. High-speed rail has become a recurring fantasy for politicians who never seem to stay in office long enough to build the thing.

Even those who want climate action can see the irony: a government obsessed with ‘speeding up the transition’ can’t seem to build anything noteworthy at all.

Why? Because haste has replaced pragmatism. Policy is being driven by polls and the hope of another term in office.

The sensible approach is not no transition; it’s a smarter one. It’s for governments to step back, reduce taxpayer exposure or end it, and allow private capital and competition to set the tempo. Markets already reward efficiency, and emissions have been quietly declining in advanced economies through exactly that mechanism.

A market-led transition demonstrates a discipline that moves at a pace technology can bear, rejecting the speed politics demands. Age-old wisdom warns: a candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and yet all some note is the pesky carbon.

Let others crash their economies in the name of climate haste. We need not join the wreckage. Western nations have mistaken action for progress and haste for virtue.

In truth, much of the Net Zero rush is about keeping up appearances. Australia is trying to keep up with the Euro-Joneses, anxious to prove itself a modern, moral state in the eyes of Brussels and London. The trouble is, Europe’s own transition is faltering under the weight of its goals, and for some reason we are importing its failures along with its ideals.

The result is a kind of economic breathlessness, a nation under strain yet insisting it’s calm.

The 2025 federal election showed how this anxiety corrodes politics itself. The Coalition’s loss was a battle with bearing. Fear of marginal-seat backlash produced a party paralysed by contradiction, too timid to oppose Labor, too unsure to inspire conservatives. In trying to be both pro-Net Zero and anti-Net Zero, it became neither.

Conservatives were offered no choice, just a paler shade of Green-Labor.

Contrast that with the American Republicans, unified in their rejection of arbitrary Net Zero dates, preferring deregulation and market adaptation. Labor, by contrast, is fervently united in favour of them. Australia’s conservatives straddle both and look hesitant by comparison.

And yet Australians themselves are clear-eyed. Seventy-nine per cent value affordability over Net Zero deadlines. We’re a people who love the outdoors and who also admire common sense. They’re not saying ‘no’ to Net Zero, just not like this.

Behind this entire debate lurks something deeper: a national loss of confidence.

On the left, it manifests as fear: we can’t build big things anymore; we can’t manage nuclear; it’s too hard, too risky. We won’t amend our legislation. So we outsource, import, and assemble. Australia’s lot is the IKEA of industry: we buy the parts from China and screw them together at home.

On the centre-right, the crisis is timidity: we can’t risk marginal seats, we can’t look unelectable. And so we mirror Labor’s policy language while insisting it’s our own.

The result? Neither side believes in Australian capacity. One doubts our competence, the other their courage.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The solution to overreach is an invisible-hand approach. Drop the strict Net Zero dates. Let nuclear, renewables, gas, and emerging technologies compete on open ground. Allow markets to jostle together. Progress doesn’t need a stopwatch; it needs room to breathe.

The reduction of carbon will come naturally, steadily, without the panic. A market motivated by price and performance will always do more for the environment than one ruled by deadlines and despair, for that’s when people suffer.

If we keep treating Net Zero as a race, we’ll burn out before we arrive. But if we treat it as an evolution guided by innovation, not ideology, we might finally build something that lasts.

Because the truth is simple: haste doesn’t save the planet. It only wastes time and hurts many people in the process.