It’s the best policy suggestion the humiliatingly defeated federal Liberal/National coalition has had in years. And it must be embraced and actioned without delay – even though it comes from the enemy camp. The triumphant Climate Council, with its deceptive campaign against fossil fuels (and uranium) in the name of ‘preventing climate catastrophe’, lauded the May federal election’s ‘resounding endorsement’ of Labor’s environmental policies, ‘giving the ALP its strongest mandate since World War II to roll out more renewable power and storage, better regulate polluters and set new, stronger climate targets’. When delivering ‘this clear message of more wind, solar and batteries but no nuclear’, the Climate Council added this unsolicited advice: ‘The Federal Coalition’s sweeping defeat points to it being unelectable until it advances credible climate and energy policies.’

Quite so. The Coalition’s failure to rid itself pre-election of an incredible environment policy that largely echoed Labor’s unachievable and economically disastrous emissions reductions targets (especially net zero emissions by 2050), meant that it could not put up a real fight against the consequential horrendous costs to Australians of this climate madness. This was a wimp’s way out; it avoided a conflict over net zero it feared it would lose. After all, as its mishandled nuclear power campaign demonstrated, the Coalition is not all that competent at selling an idea, no matter how good. So, as Melbourne University’s Pursuit lamented, climate change disappeared from the headlines in this election as the major parties didn’t think there were many votes to be won (unlike the 2022 Teal election) even though ‘climate change still ranks as one of the top concerns of voters’.

But does it really? Apart from a few left-oriented surveys and a now-outdated and well-researched 2022 Australian Election Study (AES) (whose findings on the significant role of climate – the third-most important election issue behind cost of living and economic management – will turn out to have been submerged by cost of living issues when the 2025 AES is eventually released), there is no reliable current data on Australian voter attitudes on whether the ‘benefits’ of net zero are worth the mind-boggling costs.

Nevertheless, there is unlikely to have been much change in the AES’ 2022 finding that Labor is preferred by voters to the Coalition on environment and global warming policies by 51 to 19 per cent. How that converts into votes depends on the effectiveness of the rival political parties in selling their messages.

And there is a desperate need for a massive upgrade in both the policies and the capacity of the Coalition to sell theirs. As a prelude to meeting both objectives, it should take as its bible on voters and climate change this month’s remarkable report by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).  Titled The Science vs The Narrative vs The Voters; Clarifying the Public Debate About Energy and Climate, and incorporating a detailed survey of voter attitudes, it demonstrates the intellectual, political and scientific fallacies of net zero while destroying the basis on which climate catastrophists sell their expensive snake-oil – in particular demonstrating the extent to which this is in conflict with the IPCC’s actual reports.

The AEI survey shows that a majority of Americans strongly favour an all-of-the-above approach to developing America’s many energy resources, including wind, solar, biofuels, geothermal, hydropower, nuclear, oil, clean coal and natural gas, rising to almost three-quarters of working-class (non-college) voters of whom only 26 per cent want a rapid green transition that eliminates all fossil fuels. Voters also strongly favour more domestic production of fossil fuels like oil and gas in line with President Trump’s ‘drill, baby, drill’ energy revolution

The commitment by the environmental left to an extremely rapid elimination of fossil fuel usage twinned with a commitment to an equally rapid build-up of wind and solar in energy production stems from the dogma that to limit global warming to 1.5C we must hit net zero by 2050 (with tighter interim targets).

But is this really possible; can fossil fuels be eliminated so quickly? AEI’s answer is that it is not possible without crashing industrial civilisation through ‘degrowth’ or imposing a world authoritarian government to ration energy use. ‘The data strongly suggest the political infeasibility of such a program. But the technical infeasibility of the program is even clearer. It is delusional rather than inspirational to set goals that cannot be achieved.’

The numbers are clear. All we have managed to do halfway through the intended grand global energy transition from the 1997 Kyoto agreement to limit greenhouse emissions to 2050’s promised net zero is a small relative decline in the share of fossil fuel in the world’s primary energy consumption –from nearly 86 per cent in 1997 to about 82 per cent – at a huge cost. But this marginal relative retreat has been accompanied by a massive absolute increase in fossil fuel combustion: last year the world consumed 55 per cent more energy locked in fossil carbon than it did in 1997.

Consistent with this reality, the AEI survey shows that getting to net zero as quickly as possible is relatively unimportant to voters, with only 29 per cent supporting it. Two-thirds prioritised keeping consumer costs low and almost as many did the same for jobs and economic growth, with the split rising to almost three-quarters for working class voters.

So climate change was towards the bottom at 15 in a set of 18 surveyed issues for government to address. Instead of being motivated by the climate ‘crisis’ to place a high priority on fighting climate change, ‘voters are far more interested in the cost and reliability of the energy they use and the convenience and comfort of their energy-using products. They are unwilling to sacrifice much financially to address climate change or significantly change their consumer behaviour’.

That’s the reality. What people want and need is abundant, cheap and reliable energy. No amount of rhetoric about a roasting planet and no amount of effort to tie every natural disaster to climate change that undermines this objective is likely to generate the support needed for what is sure to be a lengthy (and costly) energy transition.

AEI concludes that climate policy must be embedded in and subordinate to the prime goal of energy abundance and prosperity, as American voters have demonstrated in this survey – and in their support for President Trump’s current reversal of the catastrophists’ anti-fossil fuel crusade. ‘As energy abundance is pursued, efforts to mitigate climate change should be undertaken within those boundary conditions, rather than climate change being pursued as the paramount goal and with energy abundance limited by pursuit of those climate goals.’ The Albanese government has these priorities the wrong way around. Unless the Coalition speedily sets out policies to correct this, in particular by dropping the delusional net zero by 2050, it deserves to fail yet again.