Why Australia’s Albanese won’t be the new face of climate change

Source: Andrew Bertuleit / iStock via Getty Images

By David Callaway, Callaway Climate Insights

(David Callaway is founder and Editor-in-Chief of Callaway Climate Insights. He is the former president of the World Editors Forum, Editor-in-Chief of USA Today and MarketWatch, and CEO of TheStreet Inc.)

LONDON (Callaway Climate Insights) — Australia’s historic election over the weekend wasn’t the first major climate-change election. That was Germany last year. But it did signal a welcome end to a decade of climate denial in one of the countries most in need of change.

Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party managed to rip control from the Liberals and their buffoonish Scott Morrison in a dramatic win largely brought about by a climate protest vote from the so-called Teal Independents. It’s the first Labor party to be in government in nine years and only the fourth time since World War II that Labor has ousted the conservative Liberals.

But while Albanese promised a big shift in climate policy from the politics of denial and derision practiced by his predecessor, there is a long way from where the country is now to becoming a renewable energy superpower, as Albanese put it. . . .

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