Australia should join the global effort to cool the planet and fulfill its Antarctic responsibilities.
New analysis warns that the world has left the era of climate stability and entered a dangerous zone of accelerating, irreversible change. The paper, released today by Breakthrough – National Centre for Climate Restoration, calls on the Australian Government to help lead a global mission to restore safe climate conditions, including urgent research into safe short-term planetary cooling.
Authored by Breakthrough Research Director David Spratt, Warming Has Reached 1.5°C: What Does That Mean for Climate Advocacy? says that the 1.5°C Paris goal is no longer a valid policy benchmark, as it fails to prevent major tipping points in Earth systems and offers a false sense of stability.
“1.5°C is not a destination. It is a signpost on a dangerous road to 3°C or more,” says Spratt. “Avoiding catastrophe now requires not just emissions cuts, but also drawing down carbon and exploring safe, temporary ways to cool the planet.”
Spratt says there are now new scientific warnings that “1.5°C is too high for polar ice sheets”, and that the Paris Agreement target won’t protect them. Australia’s Antarctic Action Plan 2022–2036 highlights the nation’s responsibility “to conserve and protect their unique environments and manage environmental impacts; and meet our international obligations”. That now demands a specific plan to protect Antarctica from accelerating climate disruption and glacier disintegration.
This includes careful evaluation of polar-cooling techniques such as sea-bed anchored curtains to slow ice loss, marine cloud brightening to reflect sunlight, and direct regional cooling. These must be explored not in isolation, but as part of a broader research and action program.
“A new global ‘moon shot’ is required — a government-backed effort to research potential climate interventions that protect vulnerable ecosystems and prevent tipping points from triggering runaway collapse. This includes building active cooling capacity to stabilise the climate temporarily while decarbonisation and drawdown take effect. Such a program is essential to prevent outcomes that could make parts of the planet uninhabitable and trigger widespread societal breakdown.”
Several nations—including the UK, EU, USA, China, Russia and India—are already undertaking early-stage research into climate interventions and solar reflection. In the UK, the government is supporting small-scale experiments through a £50 million program funded by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) to provide “critical” data on solar radiation modification.
Australia, with its Antarctic responsibilities and world-class science institutions, has a vital role to play. It is uniquely positioned to contribute to emergency cooling research and early interventions that could help protect both the Great Barrier Reef and the Antarctic. This includes supporting monitoring of ice-sheet instability and advancing techniques for polar-region cooling to help prevent metres of sea-level rise that would devastate coastal communities worldwide.
Breakthrough says this leadership must include:
- Supporting international cooperation on safe, transparent and reversible cooling research
- Participating in governance frameworks for solar reflection
- Recognising that net-zero by 2050 is insufficient without a pathway back to climate safety
“We’re now in a triage moment,” says Spratt. “But the goal should never have been to ‘minimise loss’—it must be to maximise protection. The task now is to protect communities, ecosystems and future generations by pulling every lever we have.”
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Warming Has Reached 1.5°C: What Does That Mean for Climate Advocacy?
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