The Target That Vanished: Politics, Net Zero, and the Long View We Forgot

“Projects have timelines. Nature has consequences.”

The trail at Black Hill rises steeply above the plains, each switchback opening a wider view — Adelaide spread beneath, the gulf glinting in the distance, and the smell of the eucalypts sharp in the spring air. It’s one of those moments that slows me down; I start thinking not just about the climb but about the landscape itself — how fragile it is, how much we take its permanence for granted.

I often find that walks clear my head in a way that long projects rarely do. Projects stretch out, compromised by budgets, revisions, and the slow creep of expectations that never quite match the numbers on the page. A hike, though, is simple. You can see the incline ahead, feel the effort, and know that the outcome depends entirely on the steps you take. Maybe that’s why, standing there among the wattles, the week’s news about the Liberal Party effectively walking away from Australia’s 2050 net-zero target hit differently.

It is a decision that will divide voters first — the promise of cheaper power today versus the responsibility to protect tomorrow — and, if carried through, will disconnect what we choose now from what future generations will have to live with long after we’re gone. Like a slow-growing cancer, the damage may remain invisible for years, until the symptoms are too deep to cure — managed, at best, with the pain relief of adaptation.

Shifting Objectives

In project work, abandoning a long-term objective midstream is rarely done lightly. Some goals are aspirational, others fundamental — but when the main purpose shifts or disappears altogether, every dependent element starts to unravel: budgets, schedules, responsibilities, even morale.

Climate targets are no different. The 2050 net-zero goal was never an arbitrary number; it was a government policy anchor — a signal that allowed industry, investors, communities, and local governments to plan transitions coherently. Take it away, and uncertainty multiplies. What energy mix do we plan for? What infrastructure lifespans make sense? How do we price carbon risk into public projects?

Without the fixed point on the horizon, decision-making becomes tactical rather than strategic — and the pieces stop fitting.

The Politics of Amnesia

Governments often claim to support “practical” climate action, but the word practical can — and often does — become shorthand for postponed. The irony is that delaying the hard decisions makes them less practical each year.

When a national party discards a binding target, it’s not a cost-saving measure — it’s a transfer of today’s cost to the future. And those future costs won’t simply inflate with CPI; they’ll rise because materials, energy, and labour will all become harder to source in a warming world. As populations age and productivity declines, the capacity of future generations to pay for what will need to be done will shrink — yet the bill will only grow. It’s the equivalent of deferring essential maintenance on a building to make this year’s accounts look better, while the cracks quietly widen beneath the surface.

And whatever the form of government, our failure to act now doesn’t just transfer responsibility and cost — it reshapes the very idea of inheritance. Instead of leaving our children a world of opportunity, we risk gifting them one that is, in parts, uninhabitable.

Systems Without Feedback

Climate is the largest and most complex system humanity has ever tried to manage — and yet we still treat it as if it were a short-term political issue rather than a long-term physical reality. Stepping away from net zero isn’t just a policy choice; it reveals how poorly we grasp the dynamics of the system itself.

In a true system, cause and effect don’t run on political timetables:
– Inputs such as emissions accumulate — they don’t reset at the end of an election cycle.
– Feedback loops — melting, drying, warming — accelerate non-linearly, feeding on themselves.
– Dependencies between energy, food, health, and migration interact in ways we often don’t anticipate.

Any engineer knows that when warning signs are ignored, failure becomes inevitable. Climate systems work the same way — small changes set off chain reactions that amplify themselves: heat melts ice, more of the sun’s energy is absorbed, and the cycle accelerates. These physical processes don’t wait for political will or public debate; they just keep moving toward the next state. And when that happens, it’s no longer about control — it’s about consequence.

Risk Management by Wishful Thinking

Every risk register I’ve ever built starts with probability and consequence. Climate change sits in the top-right corner of that matrix — high likelihood, catastrophic impact — yet political discourse keeps moving it down to “monitor” status, as if optimism alone could shift the risk curve.

Imagine designing a hospital and deciding not to install an emergency power backup — the system that keeps patients alive when the grid fails during a major storm — because the cost seemed unnecessary and the storms hadn’t hit yet. That’s what policy drift looks like at national scale: a bet against the future disguised as prudence. The risks don’t disappear; they simply accumulate until the failure arrives.

A Walk Through Time

The morning mist settles low over Black Hill, softening the ridgelines and turning the sky a pale, impossible blue. It’s the kind of day that reminds you what’s still worth protecting — clear air, living bush, a balance that can still be restored if we act with intent. Days like this are a glimpse of what remains possible if we hold to the goal of net zero, however difficult the path. We may not reach it perfectly, or exactly on time, but the point is to keep moving toward it — to give ourselves, and those who follow, a world where mornings like this will still be real.

On clear days it’s easy to believe the world will always look this way. Yet each decision we defer, each target we dilute, brings the consequences a little nearer. The storms we once called “one-in-a-hundred-year” are now familiar headlines; the fires start earlier, burn longer, and reach further into the hills.

Standing there, I can’t help but wonder what this view will look like in another twenty-five years — or fifty. Will there still be green where the creeks cut through the valley? Will it still be safe to walk here in summer heat? Or will the air shimmer with the weight of what we chose not to change?

The connections were always there — between science and policy, between planning and purpose — the pieces of a world that once worked in balance. What’s fading is our memory of how they came together, of what the world looked and felt like before the slow drift of change reset our sense of normal. The challenge now is finding the will to remember, and the courage to start rebuilding that balance again.

Next on ‘The Pieces Fit: The Modeller Who Saw It Coming‘
In the 1960s, a quiet physicist named Suki Manabe built a model of the atmosphere that would predict much of what we’re living through today. Part II looks at what his work can teach us about foresight, feedback, and the discipline of planning for the long view.