In this interview, Adam Creighton appeared on Steve Price – Sky News Australia to discuss the IPA’s research on net zero.
All media appearances posted onto the IPA website are directly related to the promotion and dissemination of IPA research.
Below is a transcript of the interview.
Steve Price:
Welcome back. Steve Price with you. I’ll get to Warren Mundine in a moment. I’ve got lots more to say and unpick about that treaty bill that passed the Victorian Upper House last night.
On the weekend, I read a fascinating piece in The Australian by Adam Creighton from the IPA on a new US report that dismantles Anthony Albanese’s climate alarmism and the consensus behind it. Look, in it, in that column explains how recent report from the US Department of Energy questions the climate change alarmist narrative and disputes the attribution of most or more than half of the 1.07C of global warming since 1850 to human activity.
He’s in the studio with me now, the Institute of Public Affairs Economist, Adam Creighton. It was a deep piece, but it was extremely well researched. And once I read it, I thought to myself, why are not more people talking about this?
Adam Creighton:
Yeah. Well, certainly the original article itself is 130 pages. It’s available online. It’s for educated readers. You can read it. And it’s just so interesting, it was hard to cram in all the facts, I thought, actually. And it does just dismantle the catastrophist narrative that we constantly hear in the mainstream press, and it’s just wrong. These are extremely eminent scientists who wrote it. They have PhDs, they’re physicists, they’re senior economists, and they’re not deniers. They admit the climate has warmed and they say that carbon emissions do contribute to that. I mean, no one really denies that.
The question, just like you said, is what is the human component? And they would say, “Well, at best, it’s very hard to say.” I mean, to understand the climate, decades in the future, extremely difficult. It’s a very complex non-linear system. And for instance, we only have 130 years of data, right? And yet we’re making assumptions about hundreds of thousands of years of climate. We just can’t do that. 130 years is not a lot. And frankly, we’ve only got good data for about 40 years. So how can you make these grandiose forecasts for 2,100, what the temperature’s going to be? Just a few facts. So the sea levels. You know, “Oh, sea levels are rising.”
Steve Price:
That’s what I was going to ask you. When you ploughed your way through this, you went, “Wow.”
Adam Creighton:
Well, firstly, between a quarter and a half of the world is much greener than it was because there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, so it’s a good thing. The more trees. The earth is healthier.
Steve Price:
Crops are growing.
Adam Creighton:
The earth is healthier. Crop yields are much higher. There’s all sorts of studies out there that they reference about French farmers benefiting, US farmers. You just don’t read these studies in the press. Okay, sure. Sea levels are up 20 centimetres in 100 years. It’s two five cent pieces a year. You’re hardly going to notice it. And you can see with coastal house prices, no one’s obviously taking any notice of this forecast. Anyway, but I started-
Steve Price:
They’ve got councils taking rules and regulations based on that suddenly their community’s going to be flooded.
Adam Creighton:
Indeed. Well, speaking of floods, I started the piece with a quote from Anthony Albanese from the Bush Summit a couple months ago when he’s telling all these people, “Oh, we’re going to have extreme weather and it’s because of climate change.” Well, there’s actually no statistical significance that these floods or droughts or whatever are linked to climate change. There were huge droughts in the 19th century, huge storms in the 19th century. In fact, there’s one storm in 1861 in December in California. And when I read about this, I thought, oh my God, just imagine if that happened now.
Steve Price:
Filled the valley with water, didn’t it?
Adam Creighton:
Yep. 10 feet of rain, called the ARkStorm. The whole valleys were filled with water. Just imagine the hysteria if that happened now. But the point is that happened before there was industrialization, basically. So there’s just huge variability in climate. We are probably contributing, but even if we are… And then so the last third of the report is, okay, let’s assume that we are doing it. Well, the cost of changing is just too much. We should just deal with, it if it happens.
Steve Price:
Okay. And how much can Australia do-
Adam Creighton:
Well, the report even said-
Steve Price:
… to fixing that?
Adam Creighton:
Well, the report even said, even in the case of the United States, which is 13% of global emissions, even if they got rid of all of their internal combustion engine cars, it wouldn’t make a scrap of difference. And even if the US got rid of all of its emissions, wouldn’t make much of a difference.
So Australia with 1% obviously can’t make any difference whatsoever. So look, I really recommend reading it. It’s a great piece of work, lots of references. And I might add, they only use the studies that are in the IPCC report itself. And I should add the IPCC report, which of course most journalists don’t read, is actually pretty dispassionate and objective. It’s not hysterical. It’s just you only get the summaries at the start that the think tanks put out, and journalists have. So anyway, it was very refreshing to me.
Steve Price:
[inaudible 00:04:30] people, like Bill Gates now for turning. But when you sit and watch question time and you see Chris Bowen do his Vauderville act, which he does every time he’s asked a question about climate change and global warming, no one’s going to convince him to reverse where he’s going.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah. Look, I think the Labour Party is going to look very silly on this question in the next few years. I mean, it’s not just Bill Gates. I mean, it’s Tony Blair in the UK. He said the UK’s policies, very similar to ours, are completely out of whack. They’re crazy. They’re too extreme. I think the narrative is falling apart all around the world.
I mean, you’re seeing the inflation figures this week with energy prices. People are just not going to believe this. And it’s a lie. Let’s be honest, it’s a lie. Chris Bowen must know. He’s not a stupid man. He must know that more wind and solar does increase power prices. And so when he says it doesn’t, I mean, that must be a lie.
Steve Price:
Just finally, coalition sat down today. They had a big meeting of all hands on deck, “We’re going to talk honestly about what we should do about net climate change, net-zero.” Came out with nothing. No decision on what they might or might not do. The leader wasn’t even there. Do they not just need a good shaking?
Adam Creighton:
Well, look, I think only for Australia, we just need the National Party to come out against it. We need one of the major parties to attack it every day, because support for it is in. I mean, surveys show this. IPA surveys show this. Okay, people want to do net-zero. They don’t even know what that means and they’re not willing to spend much money to do it. And there’s no major party basically pointing out all the facts that you and I know. And if that happened, I think you’d see support crumble just like it has around the world. I mean, in the US, it’s crumbling. Certainly in Argentina, it’s crumbling. Their president doesn’t want a bar of it.
Steve Price:
Great to catch up with you. I know you’re on a special assignment next week. I’d love to talk to you when you get back from that.
Adam Creighton:
Thanks, Steve. Thanks for having me.
Steve Price:
It’d be very exciting. Adam Creighton-
This transcript with Adam Creighton on Steve Price – Sky News Australia from 24 October 2025 has been edited for clarity.
