Piers Akerman: ‘Blackouts’ Bowen stuck in la-la land over refusal to wind back lunatic green agenda on energy
Reality has struck energy-pressed governments everywhere in the real world, but not in Labor’s progressive la-la land, writes Piers Akerman.
Opinion
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Reality has struck energy-pressed governments everywhere in the real world, but not in Labor’s progressive la-la land.
On its net-zero energy policy, Australia is as isolated as it was when it broke from Gondwanaland 200 million years ago. Britain is the latest European nation to roll back ambitious Green-Left emission measures in the face of energy shortfalls and rising power costs.
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has rolled back a ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035, applied the brakes to plans to phase out gas boilers, and rejected calls to hit homeowners with further regulations on energy efficiency. He’s stepped up plans to develop oil and gas projects in the North Sea and drill for fossil fuels and lifted a ban on onshore wind developments that had been blocked by NIMBY protesters.
Yet, just two years ago, the UK hosted the COP26 conference and was praised by the environmental movement as a leader in the fight against the climate “crisis”. The climate activists are spewing. For far too long they crippled the British energy sector and disrupted the population with bizarre stunts to capture the headlines and TV news.
Gluing themselves to roads and artworks, screeching false claims the world was facing an emergency, that the human race faced extinction – and now their bluff has been called.
The UK is not alone in winding back the lunatic green agenda. The new Swedish government spent its first 100 days unwinding environmental regulation and slashing funding to climate-change policies, says the progressive Left Green European Journal.
It quickly changed the name of the Ministry of Environment to the Ministry of Climate and Enterprise, prioritising a reduction in diesel and petrol prices. It’s also reducing the climate and the environment budget by 58 per cent over the next three years and is building nuclear power plants. Having paid nearly $2.50 a litre for standard unleaded petrol on Saturday, I say we need some of whatever is driving the Swedish government now.
Our Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris “Blackouts” Bowen has his eyes and ears closed to the prospect of nuclear energy. On the ABC’s Q+A on Monday, he was made to look foolish by year 11 student Will Shackel, 17, who calmly asked why the government didn’t let the markets decide whether wind and solar were more affordable and more reliable than nuclear power.
Shackel said the easiest way to do this would be to lift the ban on nuclear power – a fact that puts the AUKUS agreement to service and build a nuclear-powered submarine fleet in Australia in a strange position.
Shackel outshone all but one of his fellow panellists, who were (apart from Bowen) vacuous teal MP Allegra Spender and economist and Climate Council member Nikki Hutley. The only other non-Green-Left was opposition climate and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien, who believes nuclear energy has a place in the mix.
Bowen, who is solely reliant on ideology and who refuses to acknowledge the claim the
CSIRO report he frequently refers to is misleading, dismisses nuclear power: “We don’t have a nuclear industry in Australia, so we’d be starting from scratch.”
Yet we do have a successful nuclear industry in Sydney’s Lucas Heights, and every other OECD nation uses nuclear power. Eminent climate change authority Professor Ian Plimer, a favourite of the late Duke of Edinburgh, has published three handbooks on climate change.
He calls them his Little Green Book series and they’re available from Connor Court publishing.
Prince Philip asked Plimer “when will commonsense and good science prevail and what happens if it does not fairly soon?” Plimer sets out his answer in these books and I commend them to Bowen.
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