by ROGER CROOK – ANTHONY Albanese’s plan to decarbonise Australia by 2050 is an experiment that has never been done before anywhere in the world.
Converting to 100 per cent renewable energy entails significant changes to the fabric of our society and challenges the financial stability of our country.
- Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people.
- Are we now totally reliant on Asia?
- When the shipping lanes close, Australia closes.
The magnitude and the effect of the changes are unknown and uncosted; this is because the method of decarbonisation Labor has embarked upon, using all renewable energy, is an untested experiment.
Labor has wagered the future of Australia, our country, on mere speculation.
FAILURE
This experiment is under the sole supervision of Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen – a man whose career in politics is dominated by failure.
2GB host Ray Hadley has nicknamed him Casanova Bowen. (Apparently that has something to do with how has Bowen treated every portfolio he’s ever had. Ray Hadley has a more colourful explanation.)
Prior to the 2022 federal election, Albanese and Bowen with virtually everyone in the Labor Party promised that power bills, according to the best research in the world, would be reduced by $275 by 2025.
Two years after that promise was made, power bills have increased beyond the ability of many to pay; the number of people seeking assistance is a national disgrace for a country that once had the cheapest electricity in the world.
When did this decarbonisation madness start?
It was in 1992, when Paul Keating was PM, that this farrago and the climate fear started; the population was just 17.5m (today 26.6m).
In that year Australia became party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
This was followed by the Kyoto Protocol in 1998 when John Howard was PM. Why he signed goodness knows, it was probably “the thing to do” in those days.
Then in 2015 came the Holy Grail of Fear the Paris Agreement, which was signed by of all people, Tony Abbott.
Abbott in 2018, at the Bob Carter Commemorative Lecture, tried to make amends and repudiated the Paris Agreement claiming he had been misinformed by his advisers and didn’t understand how the decision to reduce emissions would affect the economy.
Did it make any difference? Certainly not, the man who assassinated Abbott, Red Malcolm Turnbull – the Cassius Longinus of the Liberal Party – would have signed in his own blood given the chance.
So, this madness that we are now enmeshed in started with Keating, was shoved on by Howard, and Paris was signed by Abbott.
The signatories to the Paris Agreement, have been convinced by the United Nation International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere must be reduced if the world is to be saved from overheating by1.5° Celsius.
Apart from a few major exceptions, like China and Russia, the majority of the industrial nations of the world have agreed that the only way that a reduction in Co2 emissions can be achieved, and the world saved, is by reducing the burning of fossil fuels; oil, coal and gas.
DANGER
Prior to the 2022 election at COP22 in Glasgow, in a failed attempt to save his Coalition Government, PM Scott Morrison, against the wishes of many, committed Australia to net-zero emissions by 2050.
The only difference the general election made was that we now have Labor Party zealots with Bowen of Galilee in charge; the danger they present to the wellbeing of this country is present and real.
The Labor Zealots are hell bent on achieving, at any cost, a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in Australia to 43 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, and net-zero emissions by 2050.
What’s more, they are relying on divine providence and a miracle, because they will rely on only renewable energy to decarbonise Australia.
They will use just the wind and the sun and a little hydro to achieve their objective; something that has never ever been attempted by any other country, and which is largely rejected by science.
It is an experiment which will determine our future.
We are not among the bad boys on emissions.
Australia contributes about 1 per cent to world emissions; if Australia slipped into the ocean tomorrow, there would be no change to the world’s climate neither now nor in a hundred years’ time.
(The only people who would notice we had gone would be the English, because they’d have one less nation to beat them at cricket.)
China contributes about 35 per cent to world emissions and increasing; together with India and America they generate over 50 per cent of the world’s emissions.
China emits in a few weeks what Australia emits in a year. India has committed to reduce emissions – but not yet. China opens a new coal fired power station every week or so and India continues to build.
In spite of all the commitments and pledges and the Paris Agreement; in spite of the haranguing, posturing and hand wringing by the Secretary General of the UN, the well-known Spanish socialist, Antonio Guterres, world emissions are increasing every year, last year by two per cent.
CLOSED
More coal, gas and oil is being burned now than has been burned in the past. This means that if Co2 is causing global warming, then the warming trend will continue.
To achieve the goal of zero emissions, all of Australia’s coal fired power stations will have closed by 2050. Last year coal accounted for 47 per cent, gas 19 per cent and oil two per cent – 68 per cent of electricity was generated by tradition fuels.
As the nation’s reliance on solar and wind power to generate electricity has increased (and the use of coal decreased), the price of electricity to the consumer has soured.
The rise in electricity and gas costs made many manufactures in Australia uncompetitive; they have either closed down or moved (and are still moving) overseas.
The decline in manufacturing has increased Australia’s reliance on the foreign currency generated by the export of its natural resources; mainly coal, iron ore and liquified natural gas (LNG).
Any “natural advantage” the Australian people may have had by being rich in LNG, has been negated by the multinational producers and gas exporters, the majority of whom are foreign owned.
Like Essau, Australian governments sold the people’s birthright for a mess of potage.
China, South Korea India, and Japan, the four countries to whom we export the majority of our coal, LNG and iron ore, all have lower domestic electricity prices than Australia; they all have nuclear power generation as well as coal, gas and renewables in their generation mix.
It was in 1964 that Donald Horne wrote in his book The Lucky Country. “Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck,” he penned.
In 1978 Lee Kuan Yew, undoubtably one of the great Asian statesmen of the 20th century commented that Australia was in danger of becoming the “white trash of Asia”.
In 1994 Lee was asked if he still held that view. He replied that Paul Keating had made a similar remark when trying to shake Australia out of its complacency, “Watch out we’re going to become a banana republic”.
Lee went on to say that it is a problem with which we will always live. “You know that you are sitting on enormous wealth of riches. All you have to do is dig it up from the ground, coal, uranium, iron ore, diamonds, gold, you name it Australia has got it.”
How correct was Lee back in the seventies and later in the nineties? We can now see that over the past 50 years we’ve not had the drive nor the ambition of the Chinese, South Koreans nor Japanese.
We are now certainly the best in the world at digging big holes in the ground; putting what we dig up on trains and then ships and sending it to others in other countries for them to make things.
Things, which we buy back in the form of vehicles, computers, TVs, and an embarrassment of electrical goods and a humiliating amount of clothing.
PLAYING
Were we too easily convinced that the things we needed were cheaper when imported? Were we too easily convinced by Paul Keating’s desire for a “level playing field”?
Is it in our DNA to not add value to our resources? Are we now or when are we going to be totally reliant on Asia?
It will only need a “little war” to set us back on our heels. When the shipping lanes close, Australia closes.
Were we as Patrick White said in 1964, The Lucky Country, and are we now destined to become what Lee predicted in 1994, “the white trash of Asia”?
Our only national goal is political and an experiment. Is that our limit?
Is that what will prevent Lee’s prediction coming true or will it help make it happen? PC
“Why [Howard] signed [the Kyoto Protocol] goodness knows […]”.
It’s abundantly clear why he signed: he did so because he is a complete moron. (I’ve explained this before, but some people would prefer to believe that the object of their adulation is perfect, rather than simply see and understand what is right in front of them).