Fight China? We couldn’t even fight off Greta Thunberg

If you want to know how much political courage Australia has for a fight with China, just consider recent history. Australia previously surrendered to a teenage girl, writes Tim Blair.

If you want to know how much political courage Australia has for a fight with China, just consider recent history.

Australia previously surrendered to a teenage girl. In a battle for our economic future, we allowed ourselves to be defeated by a kid from Sweden who became famous for dodging school.

To this day we remain under the Net Zero command of Greta Thunberg. Even though the Nordic munchkin princess of the climate apocalypse has herself moved on – she’s now into Palestinians rather than pretend pollutants – Australia’s devotion to her cause continues.

We’re stuck in Thunberg’s former “how dare you!” emissions panic era. Meanwhile, everyone else is gradually getting Greta and the climate grift worked out.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. Picture: Johan Nilsson/TT/AFP

Including Sweden, the anti-warming warrior’s homeland.

Back in 2018, when Thunberg launched her one-girl mission to save the planet by sitting outside her country’s parliament – seriously, that’s all she did; her activism was inactive – Sweden obligingly introduced a tax on air travel.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg during a 'Fridays for Future' movement protest in Stockholm, Sweden on September 9, 2022. Picture: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP

Passengers were hit with per-flight fees from $11 to $77. And they loved it, at least for a while. There was even a popular “flight-shaming” movement in Sweden that cast environmentalist guilt upon the airborne.

But glorious liberty now returns to the land of glogg-drinking, sauna-sweating moose snackers. “The country that invented ‘flight shaming’, a concept championed by climate activist Greta Thunberg, has scrapped its air tax in a bid to boost its ailing economy,” the UK Daily Telegraph reported last week.

“The U-turn will be seen as a disaster by environmentalists, and it exposes a tension at the core of the aviation versus climate debate. When jumbo jets disappear emissions drop, but other things begin to dwindle too: regional growth, connectivity and – it appears in Sweden – public support for eco concerns.”

To paraphrase Robin Williams, eco-concerns are God’s way of saying that you’re making too much money. Ain’t that right, my rich Tealy pals?

For normal people, climate concerns become much less concerning as soon as the cash gets tight. This is why, according to leftist site Politico, economic stress is the reason why Democrats are now “in retreat on climate change”.

Pictured is former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Picture: AFP Photo / Marty Melville

Pesky reality is getting in the way of holy climate regulations. In formerly climate-crazed California, “elected officials are warning that ambitious laws and mandates are driving up the state’s onerous cost of living … other parts of the country are pulling back on climate policies in the name of affordability, too”.

New Zealand under ex-PM Jacinda Ardern’s reign became a sacred destination for wealthy American lefties. Those wokey anti-Trumpers will be distressed to learn that Kiwis are now aggressively turning away from Thunbergian terror.

NZ is “dismantling” net zero policies “brick by brick”, Associate Energy Minister Shane Jones told Sky’s Outsiders on Sunday.

“We’ve reinstated a license to re-establish the coal industry in New Zealand,” Jones said.

“We’ve gone beyond this unicorn-kissing view that only clean green energy will keep the lights on.

“The underlying message [is] we’re not going to maintain a set of targets or a set of expectations that our economy cannot bear.”

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Australian businessman Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest. Picture: NewsWire / Joseph Olbrycht-Palmer

Speaking of burdens, when he isn’t kissing unicorns, Anthony Albanese is kissing up to China.

The Prime Minister was at it again in Shanghai on the weekend, telling a discussion group about magical “steel decarbonisation” techniques that would allow Australia to keep sending iron ore and steel to China but without any carbon dioxide unpleasantness.

“Steel decarbonisation presents a range of challenges,” the PM said, and for once he wasn’t wrong.

Seventeenth century alchemists likewise faced “a range of challenges” when attempting to convert lead into gold. Male passengers aboard the Titanic copped a “range of challenges”. Australian batsman Sam Konstas was presented with a “range of challenges” in the West Indies

But Albo has a plan. “What we need,” he told attendees, “are enabling policy environments, extensive investments in research to develop new technologies and collaboration across academia, industry and government.”

To us, that sounds like vaguely sinister bureaucratic scramble-talk. But to Albanese’s communist party hosts, it probably sounds more like a direct quote from Great Leader Xi’s Handbook of Approved Phrases.

They’ll be loving it. Handsome Boy has learned his lines well.

If he really wanted to impress the Chinese government, Albanese should follow their example in other areas. His Beijing buddies, for example, are approving new coal-fired plants at a rate of two per week. As well, some 30 or nuclear plants are under construction.

If coal and nuclear are good enough for his superiors, why aren’t they good enough for us?