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COP LOOK LISTEN ISSUE 07 | 18 NOV 25

Climate Disinfo Digest Issue 18 November 2025

Hello and happy second Tuesday of COP30, where on the digital disinfo front, it’s business-as-usual: The bad websites continue to be full of bad posts, but nothing particularly new or unexpected or worth subjecting you to, dear reader.

On the ground, the Drilled team is in Belém for COP30 this year, as you may have picked up from the recent DRILLED season talking with the expert authors from the new book, Climate Obstruction: A Global Assessment. Amy Westervelt and Royce Kurmelovs are reporting, joined by Rishika Pardikar, who kicked things off with “Running into COP with Oil and Gas”, followed by a week one roundup: “COP30 So Far: Protestors, Polluters and Paying for Pollution”. Now we roll into week two.

And while we’re tracking the usual suspects in climate disinfo, it’s worth noting that the issue has made it to the top of the diplomatic food chain: the UN SG himself is championing information integrity as a core pillar at COP30. No big deal – just the world’s top diplomat saying the quiet part out loud about disinfo being the climate action threat that it is.

Which brings us to next year and we’re already peeking ahead, when COP31 may, or may not, be hosted in Australia, where a Senate inquiry into climate disinformation has put the Murdoch media empire in the hot seat, forced to deny their climate denial.

So today, we’re serving up a briefing on the Australian climate disinformation scene, courtesy of our friends at the Research and Action Hub. Their co-founder Chris Cooper recently chatted with ABC’s Radio National about climate disinfo. Read on for what R+A had to say about the state of disinfo down under!

FINDING OF THE DAY

Australia’s Climate Disinfo Moment

Australia is one of two leading contenders to host COP31, applying in partnership with the Pacific. With negotiations ongoing, Australia’s national climate program continues to falter, amidst an information ecosystem dominated by fossil fuel industry narratives.

After a landslide re-election earlier this year, the Labor Government continues to entrench its centrist politics: talking big on its climate commitments while continuing to approve new fossil fuel projects, and kowtowing to industry demands. This is despite the opposition coalition, a close partner of the fossil fuels lobby, being in tatters (seeing its worst ever polling result this month). While more Australians support net zero, both members of the opposition coalition, the Nationals and Liberal Party, last week decided to ditch net zero from their policy platform. The Nationals led the decision, largely pointing to a report from the party’s affiliated think tank, which has been criticised for using dodgy modelling that claimed coal is cheaper than renewables. The Coalition’s decision is a clear attempt to serve desperate political purposes, particularly as the far-right climate denialist party, One Nation, is seeing a surge in support and eating into its base.

Despite this lack of credible political opposition, the Albanese Government is still wrestling to juggle a sobering climate risk assessment, a contentious overhaul of environmental laws, and high profile community conflict over renewables expansion. Australia’s participation at Belém – and certainly its intention to host COP next year – will undoubtedly come under additional scrutiny as other nations question whether Australia can credibly claim climate ambition while continuing to approve multi-decade fossil fuel projects, and its government’s seeming enthusiasm for aggressive industry narratives of climate action delay and obstruction.

Information Integrity: Senate Inquiry into Climate Disinfo

In July, the Australian established the Senate Select Committee on Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy with broad terms of reference to investigate all forms of climate disinformation. The inquiry is chaired by Greens Senator Peter Whish-WIilson, with representation from across parties and independents. Public hearings are underway, and the inquiry has published 237 submissions so far that cover industry manipulation of policy to astroturfing and more. Drilled’s analysis of submissions found more than 40% of submissions (96) “were authored by organizations or people promoting climate denial in some form”. Meanwhile, the submission by prominent anti-renewables group, Rainforest Reserves Australia, was revealed to have been written using AI, citing a nonexistent windfarm and scientific articles—reinforcing the very purpose of the inquiry. The committee is due to release its findings report in March 2026, which will include policy recommendations for the government.

National Climate Risk Assessment: Sobering Science vs Industry Spin

In September, the Government released Australia’s first National Climate Risk Assessment (NCRA) and National Adaptation Plan, two interconnected documents that outline the nation’s climate vulnerabilities and the strategic framework for adapting to them. was Produced by the Australian Climate Service – established by the government to provide improved data, intelligence and expert advice on climate risks and impacts – the NCRA paints a grim picture of the future for large swathes of the country: heat-related deaths, drought and coastal flooding. It identifies priority risks to systems, including infrastructure, health, agriculture and ecosystems. While the NCRA gained significant media coverage, much of the political and industry narratives surrounding its sober warnings have sought to downplay how quickly emission reductions must occur to avoid the worst-case risks the assessment outlines – largely by adopting the familiar de-escalation and delay language of “managing risk”, “balancing feasibility and certainty”, and “enabling investment”.

 Figure 1: Climate risk to Australia’s key system. National Climate Risk Assessment

Policy: Weak Targets, Wobbly Laws and  Industry Everywhere

EMISSIONS TARGETS

The Albanese government’s decision to set a 2035 emissions target range of 62–70% from 2005 levels, has been widely criticised by environmental experts for failing to align with the Paris Agreement, as well as by business bodies claiming the higher end would require enormous capital and workforce shifts. The churn has opened space for industry framing that favours “sensible” and “feasible” steps while arguing against legally binding, science-aligned commitments. That industry language – “sensible”, “feasible”, “practicable” – is used to reframe ambition as an economic risk rather than a scientific or ecological imperative. Industry groups such as the Business Council of Australia have cultivated this framing and narrative for years – often inconsistently. It supports their delay tactic of incrementalism: acceptable politically, appealing to investors and convenient for incumbents whose models assume long asset lives for fossil projects. Ultimately, its rhetoric that helps normalise policy choices that lock in high emissions for decades.

ENVIRONMENT LAWS

The Government is struggling to deliver its promised reforms of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC). Caught between the dire reality facing ecosystems and industry’s push to remove ‘red tape’, the government is continuing to opt for weak centre politics promising faster approvals and entrenching ministerial discretion of scientific assessments. Prior to this year’s election, the Prime Minister pulled the rug on an established agreement with the Greens Party on the reforms, which would have embedded a climate “trigger” that incorporated a full assessment of greenhouse gas impacts of projects. Its pivot to negotiate with the conservative coalition has now fallen apart too, raising concerns on the compromises the Government will make and doubts on its intention to have the reforms passed before Christmas.

FOSSIL FUEL APPROVALS 

In its first term, the Albanese Government approved 27 new coal, oil and gas developments, and since re-election in May this year, has approved four additional projects. The most troubling is the extension of Woodside’s North West Shelf plant life to 2070 with limited conditions on emissions attached. Defenders of the government used industry narratives to frame the decision as pragmatic energy security and jobs policy; critics called it a failure of climate leadership and warned it would generate billions of tonnes of emissions if coupled with new upstream field development. Two legal challenges to the extensions have since launched on environmental and cultural grounds.

Data-Washing: New Frontline in Tackling Fossil Fuel Disinfo

In October, Climate Integrity, an independent and non-partisan research organisation, published its investigation into how the gas lobby paid management consultancy, EY, to produce deeply flawed modelling to influence the government’s Future Gas Strategy in 2023. The report for the gas industry’s peak lobby group, Australian Energy Producers (AEP), misrepresented Australian gas scenarios as “Paris” and “net zero” aligned, using selective data, non-existent scenarios, and assumptions that defy climate science. AEP then used this “independent” analysis to lobby for new gas fields, pipelines, and export contracts. Six months later, when the government’s Future Gas Strategy was released, much of EY’s language from the report was present – though it did not explicitly align with the scenarios it presented.

Climate Integrity filed a request with the competition and consumer regulator to investigate whether EY or AEP made misleading or deceptive claims under Australia competition and consumer law. The organisation’s submission to the Senate Inquiry focused on this case, as well as two others involving KPMG and McKinsey & Company. This highlighting of data-washing builds on work from others around the globe, and could lead to greater focus and accountability of how research, modelling and rhetoric have been used to manipulate policy and widen the gap between formal science and public perception.

Community Division: Wind Disinformation Turns Ugly

Within communities, the debate over wind power has taken a turn to become personal and, in some places, ugly. Recent reporting and submissions to the Senate inquiry show organised anti-renewables campaigns – amplified on social media and sometimes linked to political actors – have fuelled intimidation, harassment and community fracture in regional towns hosting wind and transmission projects. Farmers and landholders who host turbines or transmission lines report bullying and misinformation about land values, health impacts and waste; meanwhile polling indicates rural support for renewables remains high even as perception diverges from reality.

More Key Developments in Australia’s Climate Disinfo Landscape:

GOOD TO KNOW: AUSSIE EDITION

LISTEN TO THE EXPERTS

If you have any investigative leads CAAD should explore, or want to find out more about our research and intel during the summit, please email [email protected]. We also have members on the ground in Belém who are available for interviews and side-events.