A succession of climate deniers in Australia and conservative governments have portrayed the country as irrelevant to climate change outcomes. This is how Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison described the country’s role in global climate action in the middle of its worst fire season on record last summer. The argument is that because Australia accounts for just 1.3 per cent of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, any action it takes is too small to influence global outcomes. That approach would suggest Australia or any small country should give up on playing a constructive role beyond its own narrow interests in any international dealings, from trade to finance to rule-making.

The fact is that Australians are on track to suffer 12–24 times more of the damages from climate change than the global average. This exceptional vulnerability is Australia’s strongest incentive to accelerate the global climate mitigation effort, invest in domestic resilience and take a leadership role in decarbonising the region.

Juxtaposed against last summer’s bushfire death toll of 34 people and an estimated 3 billion animals, Morrison’s ‘Australia doesn’t matter’ excuse deserves scrutiny.

Australians emit 3.37 times more CO2 per capita than the global average citizen, a number that jumps to 4.15 when including more potent greenhouse gasses such as methane. As the world’s largest exporter of coal and second largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, Australia’s fossil fuel exports introduce a further 565.72 megatonnes (mt) of CO2 into the global supply chain. And in burning an area the size of Iceland, last summer’s fires released an additional 400 mt of CO2 into the atmosphere — an amount roughly equivalent to Australia’s annual carbon output.

The key point that Australia’s leaders if not its citizens are yet to grasp is that the location of emissions is separate from the impact of climate change, and the outcomes are going to be bad for Australia. The geographic distribution of emissions is driven by specialisation, trade relationships and comparative advantages. Some countries produce carbon-intensive heavy manufacturing goods, others produce lower-carbon services.

The geographic distribution of climate damage — storms, floods and fires — is, however, determined by the global climate system. ‘The globalised nature of the causes and consequences of climate change cannot be undone with acrobatic accounting or an arbitrary and myopic decision for UN treaties to focus solely on national emissions’, as Matthew Agarwala of the Bennett Institute in Cambridge says.

Given its exceptional vulnerability, the smart strategy is for Australia to lead rather than obstruct global and regional decarbonisation efforts.

Action on climate change is an opportunity for Australia to bolster cooperation with its Asian neighbours on an issue of common interest, something the Australian government regularly touts as its key priority. It is an opportunity to work with China on a shared priority, something desperately needed to help mend an increasingly toxic bilateral relationship. And it is an opportunity to work closely with the incoming Biden administration and to constructively engage the United States in Asia, providing a platform for broader cooperation across other policy areas.

The belief that Australia’s policies are not noticed by the rest of the world prevents Australia from seizing these opportunities. This belief was advanced again last week by a government parliamentarian, arguing that ‘the idea that other nations spend much time focused on Australian policy is a vanity’. While people and policymakers outside Australia might not have intimate knowledge of Prime Minister Morrison’s policies, they certainly know who he is. More often than not, unfortunately, it is because of his stunt in 2017 when he took a lump of coal into Australia’s Parliament proclaiming: ‘This is coal. Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared’.

This stunt received substantial international press (including from CNN, BBC, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Fox News and countless other news outlets) and is routinely mentioned in any international critique of Scott Morrison’s leadership, particularly during extreme weather events in Australia. The notion that Australia’s policies on climate change are ignored by the international community is naive and false. It not only prevents Australia from seizing valuable opportunities, it casts a shadow over other areas in which Australia seeks a role in regional and global cooperation.

China, Japan and South Korea are three of Australia’s four largest trading partners and these economic powerhouses in Northeast Asia are Australia’s largest customers of coal and LNG. Japan and South Korea have committed to net-zero emissions by 2050 and China by 2060. The United States under President Biden who is set to commit to a 2050 net-zero target and will appoint John Kerry as his international climate envoy. Energy transition has just accelerated globally and Australia’s top exports now have an expiry date as its leadership struggles to settle climate policy targets.

Australia faces huge pressures on the path to energy transition that the rest of the world has chosen. There is pressure around the world to apply penalty tariffs on imports from perceived environmental free riders. As Ken Heydon argues in the first of this week’s lead articles, these policies are a threat to trade and are unlikely to help the environment. There are better policy alternatives to deal with trade and environment linkages, including tackling fossil fuel subsidies. But carbon border taxes will certainly hit Australia’s carbon exports.

As Llewelyn Hughes points out in the second of this week’s lead articles, the challenge that Japan’s — and Australia’s other Northeast Asian partners’ — zero emissions ambitions represent to Australia cannot be underestimated. ‘Australia is the world’s second-largest exporter of thermal coal and Japan [alone] buys 13 per cent of it, valued at AU$9.6 billion dollars (US$7 billion). Japan also buys 17 per cent of Australia’s metallurgical coal exports, valued at AU$7.4 billion (US$5.4 billion) and 22 per cent of Australia’s natural gas exports, worth AU$4.8 billion (US$3.5 billion)’, says Hughes.

On climate change, Australia’s time is running out. No amount of political sweet-talk will avoid the need to deal with the facts of climate change. To avoid the huge costs of a hard energy trade transition, Australia needs to set emissions targets, and work with Japan, China, South Korea, its major energy partners in the region, towards an energy future that positions Australia as a major supplier from its abundant renewable resources.

The EAF Editorial Board is located in the Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University.