Andrew Bolt: Journalists fail to ask boasting Chris Bowen obvious climate questions

Chris Bowen boasted on Wednesday the Albanese government was “on track” to slash our emissions by 42.6 per cent by 2035, but journalists failed to ask the minister two obvious questions.

Nobody asked Chris Bowen the two obvious questions when he boasted on Wednesday the Albanese government was “on track” to slash our emissions by 42.6 per cent by 2035.

“This is real progress,” burbled our messianic Climate Change Minister.

Really? See, not one journalist asked Bowen: Minister, how much has this cost?

Not one added: What difference will it make to the climate?

This is extraordinary given that minutes later Bowen had to assure NSW there’d be no blackouts – yet – “providing no other coal-fired units break down today”.

Yes, Sydney is so short of electricity that Premier Chris Minns begged residents to not use their washing machines or dishwashers on Wednesday afternoon. Turn down the aircon.

Whether there’s enough to dodge blackouts once summer hits, no one knows. The global warming schemes that helped shut a third of our coal-fired generators have left us with a power system as rickety as a Third World one.

Chris Bowen has boasted the Albanese government is on track to slash emissions by 42.6 per cent by 2035. Picture: Martin Ollman

Energy adviser EnergyQuest predicts electricity shortages will hit hard in 2026.

Supply in winter will then meet only 70 per cent of demand in NSW and ACT. In Victoria, “there simply won’t be enough gas”.

It’s infuriating that Australians under Bowen now pay around $450 a year more for their electricity, yet can’t even count on the power staying on.

No one know the total bill for this global warming folly. Bowen in one press release last year listed more than $60 billion of promised climate subsidies, grants, loans and handouts, and he’s promised more billions since.

Then add the global warming schemes of states, councils and businesses. It’s got to be costing you much more than $10 billion a year to “save” the planet.

But that’s the other critical question Bowen wasn’t asked. For all this pain, what’s the gain? How much will our billions lower the temperature?

Not one prime minister has ever said, because, as former chief scientist Alan Finkel admitted, we’re too small to make any difference.

Should we even want to, when we’re getting fewer cyclones, more rain overall, and bigger crops? Is this a “climate crisis” we must spend billions pretending to stop?

One day we’ll wake up and wonder why we devastated our power system without asking what it would cost or achieve.

We’ll then remember the man who boasted this was the plan and “this is progress”. How we will blush to think he was believed.

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Journalists fail to ask boasting Chris Bowen obvious climate questions