Clive Hamilton has been at the pointy end of public discourse on climate change for more than 20 years.

Among lots of other things, he’s written challenging books on the science, founded a progressive thinktank and had a failed crack at being an MP for the Greens.

He got his Order of Australia medal for his contributions on climate and sustainability almost eight years ago. His book Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change is now a decade old.

In 2012, Hamilton was appointed to the Australian government’s Climate Change Authority (CCA) – a body charged with making recommendations to government on climate policy in line with the science.

Turnbull's new climate and energy adviser worked for coal industry lobby group Read more

But last month, Hamilton quit the CCA after hearing a chorus of government ministers, led by the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, touting the oxymoron of “clean coal”.

Now Hamilton has spelled out his antipathy towards Turnbull – a politician who only six years ago was a climate change hawk, who advocated for a massive shift to renewable energy, and who was utterly sceptical of “clean coal”.

In an interview for my podcast, Positive Feedback, Hamilton gives a withering personal assessment of the prime minister and reveals what was going on inside the CCA before his resignation.

“I wasn’t disappointed, or upset,” says Hamilton on Turnbull’s recent advocacy for building more coal plants, “I was disgusted.”

“For Turnbull to be using that outrageous term [clean coal] to describe coal-fired power stations – I was disgusted.”

It’s a tragedy to watch a man like Malcolm Turnbull shrink into the kind of shell of a person that he has become Clive Hamilton

“It’s a tragedy to watch a man like Malcolm Turnbull to shrink into the kind of shell of a person that he has become. I don’t understand why a man like that does not say ‘look, I have some fundamental principles and I might lose the leadership but at least I will be able to look at myself in the mirror for the rest of my life.’”

Hamilton points out that a decade ago Turnbull was pledging he would “not lead a party that is not as committed to effective action on climate change as I am.”

“The truth is that he now does lead a Liberal party that has the same views as he does on climate change,” says Hamilton.

“The Liberal party has undergone a transformation in the last 10 years and it’s now dominated federally by troglodytes from the hard right – the anti-science brigade, some of whom probably cheered when Pauline Hanson attacked vaccinations the other day. These are the anti-science, anti-expertise crowd — the kind of people who now advise Donald Trump.”

Trump’s election, believes Hamilton, has galvanised climate science deniers around the world, including those in Turnbull’s party.



“I think that [climate science] deniers now are more inclined to believe they were right and history is on their side and this whole thing will be shown to be a hoax and a scandal – that does embolden them and undoubtedly that’s a factor in Turnbull’s partyroom.”

Hamilton publicly resigned from the CCA last month, citing as a final straw the government’s advocacy for coal. That’s public knowledge.

But in the interview, Hamilton tells me the problems seemed to start in October 2015 when the new Turnbull government made fresh appointments to the authority.

“The whole character of the authority changed,” Hamilton says. After that point, the CCA was “dominated by people who want action, but not too much action.”

In a story from inside the CCA, Hamilton says: “There was this talk of a secret plan … to develop a tricky policy, the emissions intensity scheme in the electricity sector, which [the authority] would recommend in a report and this would be used by Malcolm Turnbull to justify what he wanted to do.”

This, Hamilton says, was touted by some members of the authority as a tool for Turnbull to use against a backbench reluctant to do anything on climate change.

Hamilton was told to “pull his head in” and get in line with the plan that he was told represented the best chance of progress.

He was initially “half persuaded” by the idea but as time wore on, he says he realised the “secret plan” wasn’t plausible and that Turnbull was drifting further away from any meaningful action on climate change.

In late 2016, the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, said an emissions intensity scheme, or something like it, could be part of a government review into climate policy. That position lasted only a few hours before Frydenberg backtracked and Turnbull dismissed the idea.

“Pathetic,” says Hamilton.

In August 2016, the cracks in the authority went on public display.

The CCA had published a report recommending cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in line with the government’s current target – a reduction of 26% to 28% by 2030. The CCA had previously recommended that target should be at least 40%.

Hamilton and his CCA colleague Professor David Karoly, a climate scientist, refused to sign the report and instead issued their own, leading calls for them to resign.

So now the professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University is out of the authority and readying himself to launch a third book in a climate change trilogy, Defiant Earth: The fate of humans in the anthropocene.

He thinks readers will feel “reflective… but you won’t feel hopeful.”

He says: “If you look at what the scientists are saying and you’re not despairing then you are not really listening to what they are saying.”