The world is pulling back from climate absolutism. Australia should take note.

Something important is happening in global energy politics, and Australia would be foolish to ignore it.

Across governments, boardrooms and investment markets, the era of climate absolutism is giving way to something more pragmatic. Not denial. Not indifference. But a growing recognition that pursuing net zero at any cost is politically fragile, economically risky, and socially regressive.

This shift is most visible in the United States and Europe, but its implications are global. And for a country like Australia, resource-rich, energy-hungry, and already struggling with electricity prices, it matters a great deal.

The evidence is mounting. Axios recently reported that global venture capital investment in climate and clean-tech has fallen by nearly 50 per cent since its 2021 peak. That is not a rounding error or a short-term wobble. It is a sharp retreat from the idea that governments can simply mandate a rapid energy transition and expect markets, voters and households to absorb the cost.

This is not because people suddenly stopped caring about the environment. It is because the political and economic reality of the transition has collided with everyday life.

Energy policy is no longer an abstract moral exercise. It shows up on power bills, grocery prices, rent, and insurance premiums. And when climate ambition translates into higher household costs, it is working families, low-income households and the most vulnerable who are hardest hit.

That reality is now reshaping politics overseas. In Europe, governments have softened vehicle bans, delayed targets, and quietly retreated from the most aggressive elements of their net zero frameworks. In North America, companies that rushed headlong into electric vehicle production have pulled back after discovering that demand does not materialise on command. Even long-standing climate advocates are conceding that the pace and design of the transition have been misjudged.

Australia is not immune to these pressures. In fact, we are particularly exposed to them.

We already have some of the highest electricity prices in the developed world. Households are being asked to absorb higher costs while being told, often by the same political class, that this is the unavoidable price of virtue. With hardworking Australians struggling to keep the lights on, that message is wearing thin.

The problem is not climate action itself. It is the insistence that there is only one acceptable pathway, one set of technologies, one moral posture, and that any deviation is heresy.

This is where Australia’s energy debate has gone wrong.

Net zero has become an article of faith rather than a policy goal to be tested against cost, reliability and social impact. Technology choices are pre-determined. Trade-offs are downplayed. Costs are deferred or obscured. And dissent is treated as obstruction rather than a legitimate concern.

That approach is neither sustainable nor democratic.

A serious energy policy starts from outcomes, not slogans. Affordable power. Reliable supply. Lower emissions over time. Energy security. Regional jobs. Household resilience. These goals are not mutually exclusive, but achieving them requires flexibility, not dogma.

This is why a technology-agnostic approach to electricity generation matters.

It allows markets to innovate rather than comply. It encourages competition rather than compliance. It recognises that different regions, industries and households have different needs and that forcing a single solution onto a complex system produces perverse results.

It also acknowledges an uncomfortable truth: decarbonisation that prices people out of the energy system is not a moral victory. It is a political failure.

Climate policy that disproportionately hits those least able to absorb higher costs will eventually collapse under its own weight. The global pullback now underway is proof of that.

Australia has a choice. Our government can cling to maximalist targets and hope voters continue to tolerate rising prices, unreliable supply and policy churn. Or recalibrate, without abandoning environmental responsibility, toward a more grounded, more honest energy framework.

That means being open to nuclear, to gas as a transition fuel, to emerging technologies not yet favoured by activist orthodoxy. It means focusing on emissions intensity and system resilience rather than symbolic deadlines. And it means admitting that affordability is not a secondary consideration; it is the political foundation on which any durable climate policy must rest.

The world is not abandoning climate action. It is abandoning climate absolutism.

Australia should do the same, before the cost of ignoring reality becomes one voters refuse to pay.