Andrew Bolt: Don’t believe climate hysterics lies on coal

Greens leader Adam Bandt claims “renewables are cheaper than coal or gas”, but if that was true then why is China building 95 new coal-fired power stations?

PLEASE, ask just one question before buying the snake oil of global warming hustlers like Adam Bandt, Anthony Albanese and Malcolm Turnbull.

If wind and solar power really is now cheaper than coal, why is China building 95 new coal-fired power stations?

There’s no way China would do that if Bandt, the Greens leader, was right: that “renewables are cheaper than coal or gas”.

True, Bandt is a climate hysteric who last week even cried that global warming was “cooking our kids”, but Albanese, the federal Labor leader, also insists “renewables are the cheapest form of new energy” as he sells Labor’s mystic dream of a no-coal future.

Turnbull, the former Liberal prime minister, says the same, tweeting: “The bottom line is renewables + storage are cheaper than new coal.”

Of course, Turnbull is now flogging you-beaut green hydrogen schemes for billionaire Andrew Forrest, and stands to make another fortune if enough Australians believe him.

But should you believe any of these warmists, before you agree Australia must never build a new coal-fired power station – and probably shut the 20 we still have left?

So let me ask again: If wind and solar power is cheaper than coal, why is China building 95 new coal-fired stations?

Greens leader Adam Bandt.

It cannot be that China’s leaders are stupid. See how they’ve made China rich.

It cannot be that China’s coal is cheaper and better. It’s actually had to ship in coal that we’ve dug up right here.

Nor can it be that China doesn’t have solar and wind technology. China makes 60 per cent of the world’s solar panels and has the world’s biggest maker of wind turbines.

Indeed, Australia actually imports Chinese wind towers, and about 80 per cent of our solar panels are also from China, says the Clean Energy Regulator. See what’s going on? Australia has now scrapped a third of its coal-fired power stations, and instead installed wind and solar farms from China. But China has meanwhile built more new coal-fired generation in two years than all Europe generated in the first half of this year.

China is building all these new plants because coal is actually cheaper than wind and solar if you want electricity all day, not just when it’s sunny or windy.

This exposes two frightening things.

One is that the media is covering up a collective fit of madness in the West.

Why do the Bandts, Albaneses and Turnbulls get away with saying such false things about coal? Why did our national broadcaster, the ABC, declare Turnbull’s claim was actually a “fair call”?

It’s because much of our media now crusades for this new green religion, and you cannot trust them to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The second thing going on is the China threat.

You may wonder why China – the world’s biggest emitter – is allowed to increase its emissions even more while we in the West kill ourselves trying to cut our own.

China building 95 new coal-fired power stations.

The answer is extraordinary: Because we signed a deal specifically to let this dictatorship get stronger while the West gets relatively weaker.

It’s all in the documents of the United Nations’ Paris Agreement. We agreed to let China and other “developing” countries wait before “peaking” – before cutting their own emissions – “on the basis of equity, and in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty”.

To translate: Coal and gas are the cheapest way to get richer. So we thought it only fair that China be allowed to use more coal and gas to catch up to the West.

That’s why China says it won’t cut its emissions until 2030. In fact, its Premier, Li Keqiang, last month even urged China’s electricity companies to burn as much coal as they could find to avoid more blackouts, saying “electricity and coal supply is crucial to people’s lives and a stable economic performance”.

This means China – a brutal dictatorship that’s already threatening war – will get even more powerful than us, while we in the West cripple our own electricity systems and economies.

Look already. Britain, which closed its own coal generators, is now short of power, thanks in part to a “wind drought” that’s hit many of Europe’s wind farms.

Germany’s electricity prices have meanwhile hit record highs, even though it spent $185 billion in just five years trying to transition to green energy.

Wake up. Global warming is a suicide cult of the West. Know this, before swallowing the poison of Bandt, Albanese and Turnbull.