Zoe Daniel is an Australian former journalist and politician who is working to combat the narrative that taking action against climate change is bad for the economy. Her goal is to push the scientific facts and realities of climate change into the mainstream of politics, because “in this post-truth environment, fossil fuel interests are winning the hearts and minds of voters.”
Zoe Daniel is an Australian former journalist and politician who became the first independent member of parliament in 2022. While she lost the seat in 2025, she still utilizes her voice to speak on issues important to the world. Recently and more specifically, climate change has become a huge part of her message, especially combatting the messages that she believes world government powers are pushing that taking climate action is economically bad.
Daniel spoke on this in a recent op-ed for the Guardian, where she referenced how last parliament she “negotiated an amendment to the Climate Change Act to lock in Australia’s carbon emissions target as a floor – not a ceiling.”
“I did it to promote government ambition to exceed the target and, having covered the first Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement, to provide a legislative buffer against backsliding by a future Australian government.
Only a party that had no intention of achieving net zero by 2050 would talk about repealing this legislation, and I certainly wasn’t expecting it to become so contested so quickly, but we live in times where populist policy trumps people,” Daniel wrote for the publication.
“The Clinton era line of ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ takes on new meaning now that cost-of-living worries are being used to sell incoherent policy to a stressed population via manipulated information, and in this post-truth environment, fossil fuel interests are winning the hearts and minds of voters.”
Daniel is passionate about climate action, and has been devastated to see that all sides of the government have pieces that are “drowning out” those who care about “effective climate policy.”
The National Party of Australia have been “able to get away with prosecuting a fact-free, yet influential case that’s now dictating Liberal party policy and, to some degree, public sentiment.”
She emphasizes that today, these political powers are able to overlook facts, especially the fact that renewable energy resources provide the cheapest form of energy. Daniels cited that coal-fired power is more expensive and global gas prices have driven energy costs up.
“And yet, Sussan Ley has been allowed to spin the line that because of the push towards net zero there’s been a 40% increase in power costs since Labor took government. It is absolute, unadulterated rubbish.
Just a reminder that if the Coalition hadn’t undermined all efforts to speed up the transition to renewable energy between 2013 and 2022, even as dozens of coal-fired power stations were decommissioned, we wouldn’t be here,” she wrote.
“The removal of coal from the system combined with multinationals starving the east coast of gas at a reasonable price and the impact of international energy prices put massive upward pressure on electricity costs.”
Daniels then cited an informative report from the Climate Council which says: “On average in 2024-25, the wholesale price for power from renewables (the price electricity retailers pay, which accounts for up to 40% of our power bills) was $74/MWh – compared to $135/MWh for power from coal and gas.”
“The same evidence-based report sets out data from the Australian Energy Market Operator, the CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Commission showing that gas is the big driver of price spikes in the grid.
I for one am not going to just sit here and let this stand, because the big risk is that this doubt-seeding causes even the most ardent supporters of net zero to start wondering: is it all worth it? Indeed, can it be done? Or worse, should we just give up?
To the Nationals’ eternal shame, it is regional economies who are most affected by climate change and stand to gain most from action to mitigate fire, flood, storm and drought.
Everyone is letting them down with lies, delays and failure to make the argument.”
You can read more about the work Zoe Daniel’s does and the information she’s trying to spread by reading her full article here.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
