It has felt a little telling to see the resurgence of a phrase that I have always really disliked. The new leader of the Liberal-National Coalition, Sussan Ley, declared in her first statement to media that: “There won’t be a climate war. There will be sound and sensible consultation and I undertake 100% to do that”.

Ah, the climate wars. I can’t quite figure out who coined it, but it was a phrase that the Labor party (and their supporters) loved using – largely because they saw themselves as the cure to climate policy conflict.

“Together we can end the climate wars. Together we can take advantage of the opportunity for Australia to be a renewable energy superpower”, Albanese said, after his election win in 2022. And when Labor’s effort to legislate a 43% target (described by analytics group Climate Action Tracker as ‘insufficient’), then environment minister Tanya Plibersek said: “The decades of climate wars is over.”

And as I wrote here in May 2022, three years ago now, Labor’s election into power was the beginning of a new era of climate conflict.

“What this means, more simply, is that Australia’s shocking climate footprint won’t change without the recognition of the real climate wars – between those defending the fossil fuel industry, and those working to free themselves of it”. Three years on, Australia’s climate footprint has barely budged.

The Australian Financial Review editorialised that Labor’s stomping victory in the most recent election means that: “After two decades of bitter climate wars and policy paralysis, a red and green majority in the Senate means the path to net zero faces fewer political roadblocks. Or at least that’s the theory”.

In the same editorial, the paper claims “Natural gas is the best option to replace coal as a “transition fuel” to avoid blackouts and economic disruption, but it faces pushback from renewables advocates”.

In 2023, the AFR wrote this: “The role for gas in the climate wars. Many investors, environmentalists and even some political leaders shun gas as a fossil fuel.”

Why can’t we just shut up and ignore the fact that fossil gas is a fossil fuel, and that burning it causes climate change? It’s just so unnecessarily warlike!

The “wars” in question here tend to be frame as loud, meaningless spats between the two major political parties. If the Greens ever block a Labor climate policy with the hope of jostling for improvements, that too gets shoved into the category.

The Coalition never sincerely wanted to build a fleet of government-owned nuclear power stations, and honestly, I suspect didn’t even really fully oppose the idea. Yet that was the issue that largely dominated the federal election. If the idea of climate peace is everybody rolling over and accepting the status quo without protest, that is not really peaceful. That is the recipe for literal disaster.

Several real conflicts will continue to simmer in the background: environment groups are pushing Labor to halt the expansion of coal and gas extraction, along with affected local communities and First Nations groups.

A small group is pushing back on some of the party’s worst greenwashing excesses, such as the ‘Climate Active’ scheme, the Safeguard Mechanism’s over-use of carbon offsets, the party’s reliance on land-use emissions in its climate plans, and the huge loopholes in its vehicle efficiency standards.

Bowen responded to the Coalition’s intended plan to revisit its net zero by 2050 goal, by saying “I mean, if you’re going to review net zero, I’m sorry, you’re keeping the climate wars going … particularly if you decide to scrap net zero – that’s keeping the climate wars going”.

It doesn’t matter what the Coalition do. This problem is a matter of degrees – and it is clear that Australia’s policy suite has a remarkable amount of room for improvement, and many, many missed opportunities. That means the real climate wars – the war for people to exist in a safe environment that isn’t wrecked by fossil fuels – will continue for a long, long time.