Albo’s clownish Climate Change Minister must go

Is Chris Bowen a con artist or simply too dangerously ignorant to be in charge of our electricity system? Either way, Anthony Albanese must get rid of this menace to our wallets and our landscape.

Bowen has spruiked the beauty of wind power that also ‘knocked out power to tens of thousands of homes in northern England’. Picture: Jacquelin Magnay

If Anthony Albanese wanted to stop the rot in his government, he should have used the Christmas break to fire Chris Bowen, his clownish Climate Change Minister.

But he wimped it, so there’s Bowen still in his job and starting the New Year with a tricksy tweet that shows exactly why he’s such a menace to your wallet – and our landscape, as I’ve just seen on a long drive out bush.

Last Friday Bowen retweeted a post by Britain’s electricity system operator boasting it had set a record for wind power: “A new maximum wind record of 21.8GW on 21 December between 8-8.30am where wind accounted for 56 per cent of our electricity generation”.

Minister for Climate Change Chris Bowen wants Australians to get to 82 per cent of our electricity by 2030. Picture: Jacquelin Magnay

Bowen must think we’re idiots. Or maybe he’s the idiot himself.

How dumb must you be to judge an electricity system by the power it cranks out in half an hour of one day of a whole month, when you really want the lights and machines to stay on every single day?

But check out the falsity of Bowen’s message.

December 21 was actually the day Britain was hit by Storm Pia, which didn’t just make wind turbines spin, but, I read, “grounded flights …, suspended train service and stopped Scottish ferries”, and even “toppled a truck on a highway in Manchester”.

Ending 2023 with our greenest month and a new wind record 🍃🏆 In December, wind provided 41.2% of electricity. We achieved a new maximum wind record of 21.8GW on 21 December between 8 – 8:30am where wind accounted for 56% of our electricity generation. View December’s stats 👇

— National Grid ESO (@NationalGridESO) January 5, 2024

More laughably, the storm that has Bowen spruiking the beauty of wind power also “knocked out power to tens of thousands of homes in northern England”.

Is that Bowen’s big plan? To get rid of coal so that we have to hang around for some storm or cyclone to give us record electricity for half an hour in December?

What a joke, but I have bad news. That’s not where Bowen’s bull ends.

True, Australia could also get as much wind power as Britain did last month, which is in fact Bowen’s big plan.

He wants Australians to get 82 per cent of our electricity by 2030 from renewable sources such as wind and solar.

What Bowen doesn’t tell you is that to do that we’ll have to pay more. A lot more.

Take Britain, which Bowen now promotes as a success and an ideal.

Yes, it last year got more of its electricity from renewables than from fossil fuels, but British consumers also had to pay electricity bills anything up to 50 per cent higher than our own. Plus, Britain has an extension cord running to France so the lights don’t go out when the wind doesn’t blow.

We have a choice here. Did Bowen know all this when he posted his tweet on Friday? In other words: is he a con artist or too dangerously ignorant to be in charge of our electricity system?

Unsightly wind turbines are ruining our picturesque landscape. Picture: Getty Images

I know I upset many global warming true believers whenever I expose the muddle-headedness and deceit of climate catastrophists like Bowen.

Just read some of the 1300 comments on last week’s column. Not all are supportive.

To those angry believers, I have this question: why have you sold out? Why have you left true environmentalists like me in the lurch, and let a hypocritical vandal like Bowen run amok?

Last week I drove through half of Victoria, and marvelled at how green it was for January.

Wasn’t the global warming Bowen claims to be fighting meant to dry out our rains?

Didn’t the warmist Bureau of Meteorology claim in September that an El Nino would give us an even drier end to 2023?

But the smirk was wiped from my face when I looked at the hills and rises near the towns we passed – Skipton, Ararat, Stawell and more.

Call it Bowen’s Last Laugh.

On so many prominent parts of the country rose monstrous wind towers, visible from dozens of kilometres away.

Rural get-away-from-it-all landscapes had been turned into electro-industrial complexes.

And be warned: Bowen’s global warming plans call for nine times more wind power by 2050 than we have today. For every hill today scarred with wind turbines, imagine nine more to come.

I thought real greenies were against this kind of ecological vandalism, but where are they now? How can they defend what Bowen is doing to our country, and at such cost?

Worse, of course, is that for all this ruination of the views, the difference these wind farms will make to the temperature is about zero.

What a legacy Bowen will leave: all pain for no gain.

Monuments to his stupidity will stand on the hills of this nation as a lesson for generations to come.