Last updated 22 June 2026
Climate change (or global warming) due to human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels producing greenhouse gases (GHG), is now recognised as a major environmental threat by all levels of government. Mean global temperature rises have almost reached 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and are continuing to rise. Even at current levels of climate change, catastrophic impacts on ecosystems such as the Great Barrier Reef are being experienced.
International response
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 1992 provides a broad framework for international action to combat climate change.
The Kyoto Protocol was created under the convention to provide a more detailed agreement on reductions in greenhouse gases during 2008–2012 (first commitment period) and 2013-2020 (second commitment period) but this regime has now largely been superseded by the Paris Agreement.
The Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 with the objective of keeping average global temperature rise well below 2oC above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5oC . The 1.5 and 2 degree targets in the Paris Agreement are political compromises that accept severe impacts occurring.
A common misconception
A common misconception is that a rise of 1.5 or 2oC in mean global temperatures is trivial because we routinely experience daily temperature changes of 10oC or more. This confuses daily temperature changes at a single location with changes in the Earth’s entire average temperatures.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution in 1850, mean global temperature had been relatively stable at around 14oC for nearly 12,000 years, during which sea level stabilised and human civilization developed.
A rise of mean global temperatures of 1.5 or 2oC from pre-industrial levels is a profound shift in the distribution of temperatures across the entire globe, including more record hot weather driving impacts such as heatwaves, coral bleaching, and extreme bushfires. The following graphic illustrates the change in distribution of land temperatures in recent decades due to climate change.
NASA SVS | Shifting Distribution of Land Temperature Anomalies, 1964-2025
Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio
Nationally determined contribution
Parties to the Paris Agreement, including Australia, pledge to make ‘nationally determined contributions’ (NDC) to reduce their GHG emissions.
Australia’s latest NDC submitted in 2025, commits Australia to reduce direct domestic GHG emissions by 43% below 2005 levels by 2030, 62-70% below 2005 levels by 2035, and to achieve net zero direct domestic emissions by 2050.
The Climate Change Act 2022 (Cth) prescribes Australia’s 2030 and 2050 GHG reduction targets consistently with Australia’s NDC targets for those years.
Assessing coal and gas exports
Australia’s NDC commitments and targets set in the Climate Change Act 2022 (Cth) do not cover GHG emissions from burning of coal and gas exported from Australia. As Australia is a major exporter of fossil fuels, the GHG emissions from burning those fuels overseas (known as ‘scope 3 emissions’) are a significant contribution to global GHG emissions and ongoing use of fossil fuels.
In 2025, the International Court of Justice delivered an important advisory opinion on the obligations of countries (typically called ‘states’ in international law) for climate change. It recognised that all states have a stringent duty of care to avoid causing significant harm to other states, including from fossil fuel production, fossil fuel consumption, the granting of fossil fuel exploration licences, or the provision of fossil fuel subsidies. How these principles may be incorporated into environmental impact assessment and approval of coal, gas, and petroleum projects in Queensland remains to be seen.
Existing Australian and Queensland laws for assessing and approving mining and petroleum projects, such as the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) and the Mineral Resources Act 1989 (Qld), allow the impacts of scope 3 emissions to be considered to reduce (mitigate) climate change but, with rare exceptions, these issues have largely been ignored in the past in approving projects such as the Carmichael (Adani) Coal Mine.
These laws provide the Commonwealth and State governments with broad discretions to balance economic, social, and environmental impacts as they see fit within the broad policy objective of sustainable development. Decisions to approve coal mines or gas projects under these or related laws are ultimately only subject to judicial review, which is a limited process that does not allow the merits of the decision to be challenged, except in rare and extreme cases of unreasonable or irrational decisions. The politics and culture of government in Australia strongly supports coal and gas projects being approved despite their climate change impacts due to the jobs and money they generate.
Adaptation measures
Many existing national and Queensland laws, such as the Planning Act 2016 (Qld), also allow for adaptation to climate change (such as measures to respond to rising sea levels and increased bushfire risk) to be incorporated into normal planning, environmental impact assessment, and approval requirements. An example is imposing conditions on a development approval under the Planning Act requiring filling low-lying land in a coastal area to raise the ground level, reduce flooding, and allow for sea level rise. Such considerations and adaptation measures are now commonplace in development approvals.
GHG emission reporting
The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007 (Cth) (NGER Act) provides a national framework for large GHG emitters, energy producers and energy consumers to report their emissions, energy production, and energy consumption.
The NGER Act also established the Safeguard Mechanism, which creates baselines for annual GHG emissions from large industrial facilities. In general, baselines are expected to fall by 4.9% each year to 2030. If a facility exceeds its baseline, it must purchase offsets to bridge the gap between its actual emissions and its emissions limit. The Safeguard Mechanism relies heavily on offsets, which are very difficult to ensure the integrity of.
The carbon price, imposed on domestic carbon emissions under the Clean Energy Act 2011 (Cth) (no longer in force) was repealed in 2014.
Policies to coordinate response
Many national and Queensland policies, such as the Queensland Government’s policy, Pathways to a Climate Resilient Queensland —Queensland Climate Adaptation Strategy 2017–2030, recognise the challenge of climate change and seek to coordinate government, industry, and community responses to the range of threats created by it, reduction (mitigation) of GHG emissions and adaptation.
These policies and planning generally (such as local government planning schemes made under the Planning Act) face major challenges in identifying what level of future impacts to adapt to, what timeframe to plan for, and who pays for measures to adapt to or repair climate change impacts. The timeframe used as the planning horizon for these policies and plans is typically limited to coming decades or at most 2100, and do not account for expected impacts beyond these horizons.