Climate change zealots to blame for energy crisis

Clueless politicians who boast about being global warming warriors need to admit that they’re to blame for our broken power system.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese can’t see his radical global warming policy is now dead. Picture: Glenn Campbell

Anthony Albanese has just been smacked in the face by our cost-of-living punch, but still doesn’t get it. Our new Prime Minister still can’t see his radical global warming policy is now dead.

But Albanese right now is just one of the political leaders still in denial as Australians are hit by the highest prices they’ve ever seen for gas and electricity.

Look at them all, those global warming zealots who destroyed our power system and can’t admit it, even now.

In Victoria, Premier Daniel Andrews says he wants more gas.

This is the same vandal who actually bans fracking for coal-seam gas and even banned conventional gas exploration on land until recently.

Incredible. This is also the man whose ludicrous campaign against coal helped to force shut the giant Hazelwood coal-fired power station, when its owners realised it had no future in Victoria.

Or take NSW Treasurer Matt Kean, another Climate Quixote fighting an imaginary “climate crisis”.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is calling for more gas, despite banning conventional gas exploration on land. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Kean complained on Wednesday that not enough coal-fired power stations were online to heat homes in this bitter-cold start to winter: “We want renewables and coal at the moment to provide electricity”.

But this is the same catastrophist who helped convince power companies they were mugs to invest in gas or refurbish their ageing power stations, by declaring he wanted NSW powered totally by renewables in just eight years: “If you care about cheap energy and reliable energy, then you’re looking at wind, solar and pumped hydro”.

Is it any surprise that AGL closed one of the four units of its Liddell coal-fired power station two months ago, and announced the rest would shut next year? Any surprise that the Eraring power station will now shut in 2025?

Oh, and coal-seam gas operations are also banned in key parts of NSW.

It’s astonishing. Don’t these global warming catastrophists ever draw a link between campaigning against fossil fuels and now being critically short of them? Have they figured we sure could use electricity right now from that closed Liddell unit, or from Hazelwood?

NSW Treasurer and Minister for Energy Matt Kean declared he wanted the state powered totally by renewables in just eight years. Picture: Gaye Gerard

Just look: we’ve got businesses smashed with record power prices, smelters now paid NOT to use electricity, while some poorer Australians can’t afford to heat their lethally cold homes.

Yet when Anthony Albanese sees this wreckage he insists the solution is even more of the same. On Wednesday he declared it proved his new government should “do exactly what we said we would do which is to have a plan to ensure that we move to 82 per cent renewables by 2030”.

What? Anna Collyer, our Energy Security Board chief, this week pointed out how hard – actually insane – that target is.

“We need to build eight times as much renewable energy than we have right now,” she said.

We’d also need $14bn of investment – certainly a gross underestimate – just in the next 10 years to build transmission wires to all those new solar and wind farms.

“It’s actually mind-boggling when you stop to think about how we’re actually going to do that.”

No, it’s mad.

Albanese blames this energy crisis on the past Coalition government for never giving investors “certainty” to build more wind and solar plants. He claims Labor will now change that.

But doesn’t he get it? More “certainty” for green billionaire investors like Mike Cannon-Brookes means zero certainly for anyone thinking of investing instead in coal or gas – exactly what we need now.

It will also mean more expensive power. Germany spent about $750bn to get just half its electricity from wind and solar, but still needs a massive power system on standby for when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine. No wonder it has Europe’s highest power prices.

Some climate evangelists now chirrup that these “stumbles” in the “transition” to renewable energy are worth it to save us from a “climate catastrophe”.

It’s nonsense, of course. You’ve never been less likely to die in a climate disaster, and any cuts to our emissions will have about zero effect on the climate, anyway.

Nor are we inspiring the world by our useless sacrifice.

We instead read the same headlines from other countries that have also found that going green comes at a terrible price.

In China, the world’s biggest emitter: “China pivots to boost coal output, putting climate goal at risk.”

In Britain: “UK fears winter blackouts, may extend life of coal-fired power stations.”

In Germany: “Germany reactivates coal power plants.”

How long before Albanese wakes up too, and sounds the retreat?