Andrew Bolt: Anti-science Chris Bowen a threat to Australia’s future

Energy Minister Chris Bowen has confirmed he’s a zealot who won’t let facts stand in the way of his crusades — no man so anti-science should be anywhere near our electricity supplies.

If Anthony Albanese wants to save his fast-sinking government, step one is to sack Chris Bowen before he makes an even bigger fool of himself and Labor.

Bowen, the Messianic Energy and Climate Change Minister, has over the past week staged a one-man clown show at the United Nations’ global warming jamboree in Dubai, flaunting the Albanese government’s two worst weaknesses.

First, he started his sermon to the COP28 conference by linking the government’s disastrous race-based tribalism with its ruinous crusade against oil and gas.

“I begin with an acknowledgment that at the heart of action on climate change must be profound respect for those people who have cared for our respective lands for millennia – Indigenous people across the world,” he declared.

“Recognising that respect for Indigenous knowledge, cultures and traditional practices is critical.”

This brainless posturing is damning of Bowen personally, but also of the government which still hasn’t learned the lesson from its humiliating defeat in the referendum on the Voice – Labor’s planned Aboriginal-only advisory parliament in our constitution.

Wakey, wakey, Chris. Who are these “indigenous people across the world” who’ve “cared for our respective lands for millennia” – or, more to the point, which of us is not one of them, too?

Chris Bowen at the COP28 in Dubai on Monday. Picture: Jacquelin Magnay

Everyone in Australia is surely linked to some indigenous peoples somewhere on the planet from “millennia” past.

Is Bowen seriously demanding “profound” respect for the “indigenous knowledge” of every Celt from England, every Saxon from Germany, every Gaul from France, or every Roman from central Italy?

Or are the “indigenous people” he’s flattering only people who aren’t white?

In fact, Bowen’s little homily is not just racist but anti-science, which makes him a threat to Australia – and to Albanese’s hopes of not being a one-term Prime Minister.

Bowen wouldn’t have dreamt that the “indigenous peoples” he claims have cared for lands “for millennia” included the white tribes of Europe, let alone the Japanese or Han Chinese.

And why not? Because those people left their “indigenous knowledge” behind as they used reason and science to work out better ways to live without dying early and poor. Take my own Batavi ancestors, who stopped worshipping trees and learned how to drain lakes and to farm, so that 17 per cent of the Netherlands today is man-made, and the country the world’s second-biggest producer of agricultural products.

In contrast, we’re supposed to show “profound respect” for the “indigenous knowledge” of Aboriginal people, some of whom are now in the Federal Court trying to stop a $5.6bn offshore gas project by claiming an undersea pipeline will upset a man-turned crocodile they claim has lived in that patch of ocean since the Dreamtime.

Majid Al-Suwaidi, Director General of the COP28 Climate Conference addresses the media. Picture: Getty

Don’t Bowen and the Prime Minister himself realise many Australians are sick of this kowtowing to the primitive?

Sick of this endless cringing over modern Australia – a wailing so absurd that our High Commissioner in London has cancelled the annual celebration of Australia Day?

I’d sack Bowen just for that.

No man so anti-science should be anywhere near our energy and electricity supplies.

But, alas, he still hadn’t finished beclowning himself at COP28.

Bowen on Monday insisted the conference do more to get rid of coal and gas if we wanted to save Pacific Islanders from being “inundated and their countries swallowed by the seas”.

“We need to end the use of fossil fuels in our energy systems,” demanded Bowen, Energy Minister of a country that still relies on coal and gas for two thirds of its electricity, and for more than $200bn of its yearly exports.

Again, Bowen’s contempt for science is astonishing.

The science actually tells us Pacific countries are not drowning.
The most definitive study, from Auckland University, showed 42 per cent of low-lying atoll islands studied had actually grown in size, thanks largely to waves dumping sand and crushed coral, and just 16 per cent were shrinking.

Nor is there good evidence that we’d be better off banning coal and gas. Not when we simply don’t have anything that can guarantee cheap and reliable electricity without it, or without the nuclear power that Bowen wants banned, again for non-scientific reasons.

Truth is, Bowen this week has confirmed that he’s a zealot who won’t let facts stand in the way of his crusades, and Australia’s future is being threatened by him.

So dump him. Show that this government is guided by reason, not by this new racism, tribalism or pagan earth worship that makes it seem so dangerously out of the voters’ control.