Andrew Bolt: Reason is dead in climate debate

Never have we seen so many politicians tell so many lies to persuade us to trash what works and replace it with what won’t.

It happened again last week. An older friend sighed: “I’ve already seen the best of Australia.”

So many people have told me the same. They’ve been blessed to raise their families in a free, rich and optimistic country, but now?

It’s not just the new narkiness. Never have they seen so many politicians tell so many lies to persuade us to trash what works and replace it with what won’t.

Reason is dead, and a mad new religion rules.

It’s summed up by the Albanese government.

Anthony Albanese has ordered even tougher cuts to our emissions. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Delirious with global warming fever, it’s ordered even tougher cuts to our emissions – not just from electricity – to reach an incredible 43 per cent target in just eight years.

It also wants to double the electricity we then get from renewables such as wind and solar, and to make us buy more electric cars – not the 1 per cent of new cars today, but half by 2030.

In short, it will totally replace the way we’ve powered this country, but promises it will all work out perfectly. We’ll each save $275 a year, just on electricity!

Let me give three reasons not to trust a word of it.

First, these people can’t even tell the truth about the present. Why trust them to now tell the truth about the future?

They claim we must cut emissions to save us from an “existential crisis”, with Pacific island nations drowning and the Great Barrier Reef dying.

In fact, Australia’s cuts are too small to make a difference, the chances of humans dying from weather-related disasters have never been lower, most atoll islands are growing or stable, and the reef this year has record coral cover.

Second reason not to trust these people with totally changing our economy? They have a shocking record of bad business calls.

Former Greens leader Bob Brown predicted our coal mines would be a “stranded asset”, selling coal no one would buy. Instead, coal prices this year hit record highs.

In 2007, Tim Flannery, later appointed Chief Climate Commissioner by Labor, claimed half our economy could be powered from the energy of hot rocks underground: “The technology to extract that energy and turn it into electricity is relatively straightforward.”

The government will ultimately force Australians to buy more electric cars.

The Rudd government awarded $90m to a company to build a geothermal power plant in the very area Flannery recommended, but the wells collapsed and the project was abandoned.

Now billionaire Andrew Forrest spruiks another green miracle – green hydrogen, made by running massive amounts of electricity through water.

This could “replace up to three quarters of our emissions” and make us a world leader in producing “green steel”. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese agreed it had “enormous potential”.

But last week, steel producer BlueScope admitted green steel was at least decades away, after its partner Shell abandoned their planned pilot plant.

And the third reason not to trust politicians promising a “clean energy future”? Because their plans are nuts.

They’re killing off the coal-fired power stations that give us cheap and reliable electricity before there’s anything to replace them. Insane.

We’ve already lost a third of those power stations in a just a decade, and in the next three years the giant Eraring and Liddell generators will also close.

And to replace them? Forget batteries. They cost a fortune and can’t power a whole grid for more than minutes. And building many more wind farms still won’t add much electricity when the wind stops blowing.

Or take the government’s plans to force Australians to buy more electric cars, which cost a bomb and need half an hour to refuel at charging stations that aren’t yet built.

Chris Bowen plans to totally re-engineer our economy. Picture: Martin Ollman

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, eyes glowing, says he may force you to buy electric cars by raising emissions standards on cheaper petrol ones, and you’ll actually be grateful.

Yes, grateful, because Australians don’t now get a wide range of electric cars to choose from, and “reluctantly, they go and buy an internal combustion engine vehicle”.

“Reluctantly”?

In fact, Australians adore buying exactly the biggest and gassiest new petrol cars that Bowen is considering banning.

The top 10 models in the latest sales figures are four utes, four SUVs and an off-road Toyota LandCruiser, with just one passenger vehicle, a Toyota Corolla, at number seven.

What fakery is Bowen selling, where ute drivers hang out for electric cars they can’t afford to pretend to save a world that isn’t in danger?

Yet Bowen plans to totally re-engineer our economy without leaving you poorer. I think I’ve already seen the best of Australia, too.