FEATURE ARTICLE -
Issue 99: March 2025, Reviews and the Arts
Quarterly Essay Edition 94 (“Highway to Hell”)
Author: Joelle GergisReviewer: David Topp
Though this journal often features music reviews, this is not a review of the classic AC/DC song of 1979. Rather, it is a review of the mid 2024 edition of Quarterly Essay, authored by climate scientist & writer, Joelle Gergis.
Gergis begins her Essay by comparing the respective climate positions of the protagonists at the most recent national poll, that of May 2022. Then Prime Minister, Scott Morrison’s, incumbent government proposed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28 percent by 2030 while the ALP opposition bettered that with a 43 percent reduction target, along a trajectory to net zero by 2050.[1]
Labor added that it would end the ‘climate wars’.[2] Three years on, it is fair to say that those wars remain extant, albeit, simmering rather than boiling over.
Interest rates & inflation, rather than climate change, have been the dominant economic themes of the last 3 years. World security has also featured to a much greater extent compared to 2022, due to ongoing wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, to say nothing of the almost revolutionary zeal being displayed by Donald Trump redux, realizing his second term as US President will be his last. Add to the mix Chinese warships live firing in the Tasman Sea, a Prime Ministerial purchase of a seaside beach house on the NSW Central Coast and allegations of possible misuse of inside information, 16 years ago, by the Opposition Leader, it becomes very clear that climate issues have not and will not feature in the 2025 poll at a level of importance akin to that of 2022.
In an interesting piece of temporal synchronicity, Highway to Hell constituted edition 94 of Quarterly Essay, following edition 93, authored by Lech Blain and entitled Bad Cop. Bad Cop was an analysis of, and with a title like that, who else but, Peter Dutton. Responding to Blaine’s essay, ANU professor Mark Kenny expressed the view that Dutton ‘was always going to drag the political conversation rightwards on race, immigration, gender and the pace of transition from fossil fuels’.[3]
What the current government has demonstrably done over their first term in contradistinction to its predecessor and despite any ‘dragging rightward’ of the climate change narrative, is to invest in renewable energy. Gergis, however, notes that renewable energy initiatives and carbon capture technologies will not, of themselves, be sufficient:[4] ‘People are willing to install solar panels … if it saves them money on power … but … switch off when the harder conversation around the urgency of shutting down the fossil fuel industry begins … as many Australians still don’t consider climate change an urgent issue that personally affects them … not in some distant future, but right now’[5].
The urgency of which Gergis speaks stems from the empirical reality of 2023, ‘the first year where temperatures on land exceeded 2C above pre-industrial levels, with extraordinary heat records broken throughout the world’[6]. 2023 was quite benign in Australia in an extreme weather sense. Which was more than welcome given what we had endured, previously. 2022 saw our very own Brisbane River reach its fourth highest ever recorded level at the City Gauge of 3.85 metres following 792.88mm of rain falling in one week[7] and not since the ‘black summer’ of 2019/20 had monster bushfires ravaged our nation.
Canadians, on the other hand, would remember 2023, much less favourably, having lost 15 million hectares to wildfires causing that nation’s carbon emissions for that year to spike to 2.4 billion tonnes, 3.5 times that of the annual emissions of the Canadian economy as a whole.[8] ‘It’s a grave omen of things to come’ explained Gergis, and how prescient she, unfortunately, was with the not materially far away Los Angeles suffering terrible losses during the fires of January 2025.
Not only that, another Gergis prediction, this time of climate change induced ‘extension of the tropics … mean[ing] we will see tropical cyclones drifting into areas on the southern edge of cyclone zones, into places such as South-East Queensland and northern New South Wales’,[9] also, came true, post-publication. In early March 2025, Tropical Cyclone Alfred migrated to a latitude congruent with that of Brisbane, causing Brisbane, along with all centres between Sandy Cape in the north and Grafton, NSW in the south, being placed on official cyclone watch by the Bureau of Meteorology.[10]
It was also noticeable that Gergis shared a theme your present reviewer developed in his own work, duly reviewed in these pages,[11]namely, that of the conflict between a rising population and sustainable – and safe – building of new homes to accommodate them:
Gergis: ‘In … 2022/23 … migration added 518,000 people to Australia’s population … Although such a high level of migration has helped keep Australia out of economic recession, a larger population will increase domestic emissions and exacerbate the housing shortage, driving developers into more marginal, high-risk zones like floodplains and bushland areas … Analysis by the Climate Council shows that over half a million properties are at high risk of being exposed to annual damage costs … that will effectively make them uninsurable in 2030… particularly in South-East Queensland’[12].
Topp: ‘…this Chapter herald[s] yet another public policy conflict … the balance between ensuring housing is not constructed on lands at direct and proven risk of flooding … and the need … to maximise housing supply so as to, if not drive down prices … at least moderate them to some … affordability … when the lesson of 2022 … is that new sources of greenfield areas suitable for housing development have fallen due to the inherent riskiness of so many areas within South-East Queensland to riverine or overland flooding.’[13]
Gergis takes serious issue with the way in which the most recent Conference of the Parties, namely, COP28 in Dubai, ensued. COP28 was intended to provide the first global stocktake of how nations were tracking their pledges to achieve a collective world goal of limiting warming to below 2C.[14] In the result, 2500 delegates from the oil and gas industries outnumbered all country delegations bar the host UAE and the COP30 host nation Brazil: ‘How can a climate summit imploring world leaders … be crawling with fossil fuel lobbyists?’[15]
One possible answer to that rhetorical question is what appears to be the end, or the beginning of the end, of the novelty aspect of electric vehicles. ‘Europe is reeling as major brands stumble from overly ambitious electrification plans, cutting production and looking to close factories’.[16]
A buying trend also noticed in this country, especially, in light of genuine fears of range anxiety and a lack of available and working recharging infrastructure away from drivers’ homes and businesses. Hybrid vehicles, so named because they utilize both electric and internal combustion engines in combination, genuinely, go a long way to alleviating these concerns. However, their presence deals the oil majors well and truly back into the game. And will for decades, potentially. Whether this answers Gergis’ question is unknown. What cannot be denied though is that permanent global sequestration of all fossil fuels is, at this stage, impossible, no matter how earnest Gergis is in stating that the ‘most urgent thing we need to do is phase out … fossil fuels and invest heavily in renewables like our life depends on it. Because it does.’[17]
Highway to Hell is an analysis drawn by a writer prepared to focus her words as a climate scientist rather than as a political combatant, marking a not insubstantial improvement from much of what constitutes ‘debate’ over climate and environmental issues in this day and age.
And, at a length of 66 pages, it makes for a thought provoking, highly researched and time permissible read.
[1] Highway to Hell, at page 4
[2] Highway to Hell, at page 5
[3] Highway to Hell, at page 82
[4] Highway to Hell, at page 7
[5] Highway to Hell, at page 9
[6] Highway to Hell, at page 11
[7] Jack McKay & Thomas Chamberlin ‘Fast and furious to slow and very painful’ The Courier Mail, 1 March 2022, at page 3
[8] Highway to Hell, at page 12
[9] Highway to Hell, at page 26
[10] Tropical Cyclone Advice No 1 issued at 10:54 am EST on Monday 3 March 2025
[11] https://hearsay.org.au/21141-2/
[12] Highway to Hell, at page 34
[13] Brisbane Breached: The Story of a Drought Defaulted Floodplain, at pages 165 and 167
[14] Highway to Hell, at page 31
[15] Highway to Hell, at page 36
[16] Paul Gover ‘Why the Car Industry is Getting Used to Unknowns’ Wheels Magazine February 2025, at page 28
[17] Highway to Hell, at page 65
