Ignore climate twerps, fossil fuels coal, gas and oil still rule
The events in and out of Ukraine prove the absolute, utterly critical, centrality of coal, gas and oil in our every-day 24/7 energy needs and indeed our very existence.
Terry McCrann
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Don’t we have enough twerps in Australia that we have to import one like the former hapless and hopeless Bank of England governor turned climate-boondoggle main-chancer Mark Carney?
Carney, who is now vice-chairman of Canadian investment group Brookfield, was ‘in’ Australia – be thankful for small mercies, only virtually – to lecture Australians on two topics.
The first was our tardiness in embracing ‘going dark’ with so-called full-on renewable energy.
The second was to berate the board of AGL specifically for knocking back the opportunistic takeover bid Brookfield had launched for it in partnership with ‘Mr Harbourside Mansions Version 2.0’, got-lucky, once, tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes.
Brookfield and Brookes wanted to buy AGL, abandon its proposed de-merger into two companies, and accelerate the closure of its coal-fired stations which are currently keeping Australian lights on, especially, when the wind don’t blow - and you know the rest. Last weekend the partners had upped their bid to $8.25 a share. It was promptly – and sensibly – rejected by the AGL board.
The central point that AGL holders should understand is that if the duo were prepared to pay $8.25, AGL shares are worth more, much more. Bidders don’t go around offering to spend $9bn just to play Father Christmas.
They want to make big bucks on their billions outlaid. The central point that the other 25m Australians should understand is that those ‘big bucks’ would be made by ripping more dollars out of their pockets, either directly as consumers or indirectly as taxpayers, while taking them into an increasingly – real, not virtual – dark future.
Indeed, with surprising – utterly unknowing? – ‘honesty’ Carney said as much out loud. “The scale of the net zero transition (read: destroying cheap, reliable power generation) is such that this is a target-rich environment (read: there are trillions of dollars to be made from hapless governments and suffering consumers),” he said.
You could not have asked for more exquisite timing for Carney’s comments, as the events in and out of Ukraine prove the absolute, utterly critical, centrality of coal, gas and oil – fossil fuels all – in our every-day 24/7 energy needs and indeed our very existence. Despite the trillions of dollars already wasted around the world on useless wind and solar, 85 per cent of global energy still comes from coal, gas and oil.
Just 5 per cent comes from so-called ‘renewables (not including the real renewable, hated by Dark Greens, hydro) after all those trillions. The trillions more that Carney talks about will barely take it up to 10 percent. And people like Carney never talk about China, pumping one-third of global emissions today and yet more tomorrow, other than to make fatuous and false claims China is ‘taking action on climate change’.
Go coal, gas and oil to keep the lights on; go renewables-woke, go broke and go dark. Talking of twerps, there was opposition leader and wannabe-PM Anthony Albanese Wednesday saying in a speech that he would be a PM like John Howard (and Bob Hawke). So, was that Albanese saying he intended to emulate the “petulance, pettiness and sheer grinding inadequacy” that he judged Howard as PM?
I’m indebted to blogger Michael Smith for highlighting a speech Albanese gave back in 1998 where he described Howard as a worse PM even than Billy McMahon. Is it Albanese’s intent to ‘match that’? I was particularly taken with Albanese’s reference to Howard – nicely highlighted by Smith:
“You can trim the eyebrows; you can cap the teeth; you can cut the hair; you can put on different glasses; you can give him a ewe’s milk facial, for all I care; but, to paraphrase a gritty Australian saying, `Same stuff, different bucket’.”
Looked in a mirror recently, Anthony?
Originally published as Ignore climate twerps, fossil fuels coal, gas and oil still rule
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