‘Climate denial on steroids’: How the global anti-climate movement is fracturing right-wing politics at home

Barnaby Joyce, liberated from the Nationals into the senior ranks of One Nation, is growing ever more blunt about climate policy.

His new party not only rejects any action to mitigate climate change, but also the very basics of climate science.

This puts One Nation at odds with the Coalition, which has abandoned Australia’s net zero target, but professes to accept the scientific consensus on global warming. And it puts Joyce and One Nation in lockstep with a new hardline stance against climate action and science by surging populist parties around the world.

Joyce is unapologetic about his stance, telling this masthead he believes that One Nation’s “pure” position against climate science will elevate it over the Coalition he abandoned.

“The day One Nation’s vote got to 18 per cent was the day that the written-in-blood, sealed-in-concrete commitment by the Coalition to net zero was removed within 24 hours,” Joyce says.

“Now they’re trying to have a bet both ways by being in [the] Paris [agreement], which is net zero with a French accent.”

“Coulda refurbished it. Coulda fixed it up,” he said. “There goes Australia’s prosperity, the end of coal. See they are making absolutely certain you can’t go back to coal-fired power because they are making too much out of the swindle. They are ripping you off because they think you are gullible.”

AGL said that it had shut down the power plant because at 52 years old it was beyond its life expectancy and was too unreliable and expensive to maintain.

A news story came on his TV screen explaining that east coast power prices were falling due to the uptake of renewable energy.

“And then there is this ridiculous thing,” said Joyce, pointing to the screen. “How are you going to do that when you are reducing how much power we can get? They always say this rubbish.”

Five years ago it appeared that climate action was entrenched in global politics. United Nations climate talks secured universal agreements on the need to phase down coal, and later all fossil fuels.

In 2022, the Biden administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest commitment of spending on emissions reduction in history. Two years later the UK closed its last coal-fired power plant. The climate was rapidly warming, but willingness to act was accelerating.

US President Donald Trump abandoned the Paris climate agreement on day one of his second term, issued orders to bypass regulations on oil and gas exploration, dumped clean energy subsidies and gutted emissions standards.

Climate change, he railed at fellow world leaders at the UN Gener