Overnight, China announced at the UN that they would cease building new coal plants, signalling a further, faster global transition out of coal.

The Greens also seized on new polling showing Australians want to get out of coal and increase our 2030 climate targets.

Both Liberal and Labor have repeatedly said they see coal exports continuing even beyond 2050, and while the government’s 2030 target is being internationally condemned, Labor has no 2030 target at all.

Greens Leader Adam Bandt has slammed reports of the Morrison Government offering a carbon credit scheme to Santos, saying it represented a perversion of a carbon price that would only encourage the development of fossil fuel projects.

“We're heading towards the climate crisis cliff and with just ten years to change course, we need to be investing massively in renewables and hydrogen through a Green New Deal, not propping up unproven and unscalable unicorn technology,” Mr Bandt said.

Under questioning from Greens Senate Leader, Larissa Waters, at Senate Estimates, the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources has confirmed that new, more accurate methods of measuring the climate damage from methane (natural gas) will mean Australia will emit the equivalent of approximately 150 million tonnes more of climate pollution between 2021 and 2030 than previously estimated. Instead of decreasing emissions faster to stay within the existing budget, they will simply increase the amount of permissible emissions.