Andrew Bolt: Chris Bowen’s latest kitchen stunt exposes danger of his climate delusions

Chris Bowen thinks paying us to switch from cooking with gas to cooking with electricity will help change the world’s climate — it’s a chilling reminder that we’ve put our future into the hands of lunatics, who are driving us over a cliff.

I’ve just found where federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen has been hiding, and – dear God – it should frighten you.

Yes, I tracked him down to Kathryn Dan’s kitchen in Canberra, staring at her electric stove top.

Uh oh.

Bowen had all but vanished since a Resolve Strategic poll a month ago rated him the Albanese government’s least popular minister, other than the Prime Minister himself.

Check his official media page. No speeches listed since November, and Just three press conferences this month, even with an election campaign just a couple of months away.

Bowen even scrapped his account on X.

But this week he was photographed in Kathryn’s kitchen, bowed over her stove as if it were something holy, something that could save us from the Armageddon of global warming.

But this is more than another let’s-laugh-at-Bowen moment, this time mocking the delusions of a minister who thinks paying Kathryn to switch from cooking with gas to cooking with electricity will help change the world’s climate, stop bushfires, end droughts and spare us floods.

Chris Bowen had all but vanished since a Resolve Strategic poll a month ago rated him the Albanese government’s least popular minister, other than the Prime Minister himself. Picture: Supplied

It’s more serious than that. This is also a chilling reminder that we have put our economy, our jobs and our savings in the hands of climate lunatics and hysterics, now driving us over a cliff.

See, Bowen was so keen on Kathryn’s stove that he reminded us he was throwing $5.4m at an “Electrify 2515 Pilot” program, just in the 2515 postcode in the Illawarra.

That’s money to bribe 10 per cent of lucky households in that postcode – about 500 – to buy their own electric cooktops, airconditioners and hot water systems and chuck out their old gas ones. Nasty fossil-fuel gas ones.

You may be aggravated to see Bowen spending your money on other people’s appliances, but $5.4m is peanuts to him. Just last week, he tossed another $2bn to the rapacious Clean Energy Finance Corporation to fund even more of his global warming schemes.

But Kathryn’s stove tells you everything about how Bowen splashes your cash on the most absurdly unrealistic schemes.

For a start, do the maths. If this postcode 2515 scheme was adopted for every one of Australia’s 2644 postcodes, it would cost $14bn, or more than the Albanese government spends each year on government schools.

Chris Bowen with Canberra resident Kathryn Dan. Picture: Facebook

If Bowen’s handout to the lucky 500 households in postcode 2515 was given to every one of Australia’s 9.3m households, it would cost taxpayers $100bn, and we’d be cactus.

Of course, Bowen can’t and won’t do that. He’ll keep the scheme so small that it will just be gesture – a useless gesture. Or let’s hope.

But there’s more that makes this scheme stupid.

Why is Bowen pushing us to switch our appliances from gas to electricity, when two thirds of that electricity still comes from coal and gas?

Even crazier, why is he paying people to use more electricity when we’re running so short of it?

Kathryn may soon curse the day she let Bowen persuade her to throw out her trusty gas cooker. The Australian Energy Market Operator has repeatedly warned that eastern states are so short of electricity for things like Kathryn’s new stove that they could face blackouts in a year or two.

Already the bits are falling off.

Kathryn may soon curse the day she let Bowen persuade her to throw out her trusty gas cooker. Picture: Jeremy Piper

On a warm day last November, NSW Premier Chris Minns begged people to switch off their electric appliances because there was too little electricity, and solar power started to “come off” after 3pm.

“If you cannot run your pool filter, not run your dishwasher, not run your washing machine, this afternoon between 3pm and 8pm, you’ll help the grid.”

Last week, the Queensland government sent an email to public servants asking them to close blinds and turn off second computer screens and printers to “avoid forced blackouts” during what the media described as a “heatwave”.

Heatwave? Not one of Brisbane’s three days of summer warm was tipped to reach the old century in the Fahrenheit measure which used to be the measure of what newspaper headlines then called “a scorcher”.

I guess almost anything now counts as “extreme weather” to people panicked by global warming.

True, the government later withdrew its email. Relax! Supplies had been found.

But you see why Bowen seems so dangerous in Kathryn’s kitchen, cooking up more plans to spend billions we don’t have, to make us use more of the electricity we don’t have, just to pretend to “save” us from a climate crisis we can’t see.

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Chris Bowen’s latest kitchen stunt exposes danger of his climate delusions