Peta Credlin: Coalition faces critical decision on net zero emissions policy
The UN’s climate chief has warned of global “overheating” and fruit shortages unless Australia lifts its emissions targets while ignoring major polluters like China, India and the US, writes Peta Credlin.
Can you believe the hide of UN climate tsar, Simon Stiell, who claimed in his visit to Canberra last week that the world would “overheat” and fruit would be a “once-a-year treat” if Australia did not commit to much higher emissions reduction targets.
Funny, isn’t it, that the UN is lecturing Australia, which contributes 1 per cent, roughly, to the global total – but not China, India, Russia and the US, all much bigger emitters and none of which are committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050.
Stranger still that this born-again climate zealot, when a minister in the government of Grenada, in 2017 introduced tax breaks for fossil fuels.
But this is the hypocrisy of the professional climate grifters who fly around the world lecturing us about our emissions while clocking up plenty of their own and earning millions from poor taxpayers while doing it.
Nevertheless, the now almost daily incantations of impending doom in the absence of “strong action” on climate, the constant references to a “climate crisis”, plus the media’s tendency to portray every weather event as “unprecedented” and further evidence of climate change, shows some of the pitfalls facing the Liberal-National Coalition as it contemplates whether to drop its commitment to net zero and develop a clear alternative energy policy to Labor’s reckless race to renewables.
Dealing with net zero won’t be easy but, in terms of the big issues facing our country and future prosperity, there’s hardly anything that’s more important. Even our national security is predicated on our energy security, and this is why the Coalition must act and put Australia first.
The Coalition’s response must be sensible and proportionate to our 1 per cent emissions contribution. And Liberal MPs, in particular, must be prepared to weather the criticisms from the outrage industry that will inevitably come their way, rather than be spooked into going along with something that almost all of them will tell you privately is economic suicide for almost no environmental gain.
Because that’s been the problem to date; too many weak Liberals who would rather roll over and adopt something they really don’t support for fear of standing up to the whole progressive machine – Labor, Teals, Greens, the women’s vote, the youth vote, the corporates, the finance sector, the NGOs, the education lobby and the full progressive media – who are moralistic net-zero zealots.
Yet that is the job of leaders isn’t it? To tell the truth, as they see it, rather than pander to error or folly just because it’s fashionable? And might not a large proportion of the Australian public, who actually have quite good BS detectors, respond to such courageous leadership? That’s what happened in 2009, when Tony Abbott stood against Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme. The progressive Left said he was against the tide of history but he factually and relentlessly opposed a plan that was against Australia’s national interest and went on to reduce the then first-term-Labor government to minority status at the 2010 election and win a landslide in 2013.
The Coalition was similarly derided when it first opposed the Indigenous Voice, only to turn 60 per cent opinion poll support into 60 per cent opposition when the referendum vote was taken. And in every election where the Coalition has made climate and energy policy an issue – in 2010, 2013 and in 2019 – instead of broadly me-tooing Labor, it’s done well. Bizarrely, despite (correctly) declaring prior to this year’s election that the only way to get to net zero while keeping the lights on was to go nuclear, the Coalition then declined to make an issue of it during the campaign.
Since 2007, when energy policy started to focus on reducing emissions rather than producing reliable and affordable electricity, household power bills have almost doubled in real terms due to the closure of coal-fired power stations, the costs of renewable infrastructure, especially transmission lines, and the difficulty of opening new gas fields.
Unsurprisingly, given that power is such an important factor, manufacturing has declined from about 10 to about 5 per cent of our economy in that time. And while Australia’s emissions have fallen by 126 million tonnes since 2005, in that same period, China’s alone have risen by 6000 million tonnes.
It’s fair enough for the Coalition to remain committed to net zero as a long-term goal, but there shouldn’t be any binding commitment to an emissions reduction that costs jobs, drives heavy industry offshore and hurts Australians’ cost of living.
What the Coalition needs is an energy policy that’s radically different to Labor’s, such as: no more coal plants to close, new gas fields to be opened at express speed, no further subsidies to renewables (because if they really are cheap, they don’t need taxpayer support), and an end to the nuclear ban. Why should we try to save the planet on our own when China is opening two coal-fired power stations a week because coal remains the cheapest form of base-load electricity?
But given that so many people, the young especially, have been conditioned into the demonisation of fossil fuels, what’s really needed is for the Coalition to develop a policy early and then argue for it in a sustained and consistent way. They must not repeat the mistakes of the recent election where they announced a partial energy policy, late and without detail, and then failed to advocate for it.
A good start, since Labor clearly won’t meet its 2030 emissions targets, despite the economic havoc it’s wreaking, would be to demand credible costings for the targets we’ve already got; and oppose any new ones unless it’s crystal clear that they’re technically feasible and economically realistic.
It’s now time for the Coalition to grow a spine and act in Australia’s long-term interest.
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Originally published as Peta Credlin: Coalition faces critical decision on net zero emissions policy
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