Climate change psychosis doing more harm to Australia than any other country
Virtue-signalling is killing our country. It’s time Peter Dutton rescinded his party’s net-zero commitment.
Our future is dire. The climate is killing our country.
I refer, of course, to the political climate. Our major parties are obsessed with political fashion, bowing to globalist vanities before safeguarding the national interest.
They have weakened our country, perhaps permanently, willingly sacrificing some of our greatest economic advantages in pursuit of green-left virtue signalling. The Labor Party, because of its symbiotic relationship with the Greens, is the worst offender.
But if we are going to recover from this madness, we need to recognise that Coalition governments, state and federal, have been a large part of the problem. And a reversal of their squeamishness is the country’s only hope.
Our cheap energy advantage is gone. Electricity is now too expensive and unreliable for a services economy, let alone manufacturing, and the costs are crippling for small businesses and working families.
We are deliberately phasing out the coal-fired electricity that has been the foundation of our economic prosperity, and we are even attacking the use of gas for electricity generation, and industrial and domestic purposes. We have these fossil fuels in abundance and other nations are so desperate to use them that they are two of our top three exports; yet coal and gas are treated as public enemies No.1 and 2, not just by Extinction Rebellion fools but by politicians and policymakers too.
State governments ban gas exploration and extraction, they reject new coalmines, and along with local governments they ban gas heating and cooking in new homes. At all three levels of government we implement policies aimed at driving the coal and gas industries out of existence.
Simultaneously, because renewable energy proves to be so unreliable (who woulda thunk it!?) and we rely so heavily on coal for baseload power, governments are subsidising coal generators to the tune of $1bn to keep the lights on. This is a level of mindless self-harm and national vandalism that is unfathomable, yet there is barely a whisper about it in public debate.
Australia is a global leader in exports of coal, gas and uranium – resources that help power the world, yet on current planning we aim to use none of them ourselves. We pretend we can operate on renewables plus storage, a model no other country has succeeded in delivering.
Our greatest strategic threat, China, uses the resources we demonise to power its economy, manufacture export goods (including for us) and construct a rapidly expanding military arsenal that looms ominously over our hemisphere. We make ourselves weak and our rivals strong.
We are sacrificing ourselves on the climate change altar. While the rest of the world increases their emissions, they must look at us in bemusement, mouthing words of gratitude and hoping our offering appeases Gaia, so they do not have to bother.
While there is much uncertainty about many aspects of climate science and policy, the one thing we know without any shred of doubt is that whatever Australia does, it will not affect the global climate one iota. All our pain, all our self-inflicted harm, will not improve the weather or save the planet.
This month our climate and energy zealot-in-chief, Chris Bowen, trumpeted vehicle efficiency standards that amount to a heavy tax aimed at forcing us to drive the electric cars that Bowen and his brethren want us to drive. He announced this saying we were following America’s lead, just days before news broke that the US is about to go easy on its vehicle emission measures because Americans are not keen on EVs.
We are out on our own again, leading the way. Cannon fodder.
In a way it is cute. Here we are with a national population less than the population of Texas, less than Shanghai, Delhi or Tokyo, and we pretend our push to force citizens into electric vehicles will save the planet. While our trading partners and strategic rivals build coal-fired power stations and steal our industries and jobs, we have politicians, bureaucrats and academics pretending that normal weather variations and natural disasters, such as hot days and bushfires, are not only a result of climate change but also a consequence of the emissions policies in our own country.
This is unprecedented national idiocy. Even former national chief scientist Alan Finkel had to admit that eradicating all of Australia’s emissions would not change the weather. The Bureau of Meteorology is so caught up in this cult that it warned of a disastrously dry and hot summer, only to report an unusually mild and wet one.
The psychosis is global, to be sure. But we have it worse than most and are doing more harm to ourselves than any other country.
To say the official spin on climate policies is Orwellian is an understatement; it is more akin to the North Korean state media which, in 1994, reported that Kim Jong-il had shot 38 under par (including 11 holes in one) in his first round of golf.
Bowen announced his vehicle efficiency standards measures this month in a press release saying they would deliver “more choice of cars” for motorists and save a $1000 a year on fuel – which is heroic given the whole idea is for the government to force us into the cars it chooses, and it will cost us dearly. Yep, the political rhetoric around climate politics is Jong-ilian.
This week we also learned that the National Health and Medical Research Council will include sustainability as part of its criteria for recommending nutritional food. Yep, forget your calories and proteins, the government authorities will try to steer us (pardon the pun) away from meat and other foodstuffs they consider to be unsustainable.
It gets worse for farmers. Not only will potential customers be told not to eat their produce but they will be tied up in green tape, forced to submit reports and disclosures about their carbon footprints. All around us rural communities surrender land and visual amenity to vast transmission networks, wind turbine installations and solar farms. The greenies who normally would oppose such developments have fallen strangely silent, even when the installations and service roads rip through unspoilt bushland.
We have lost our car industry and other manufacturers in large part due to power costs, and as the world spends up big on batteries we risk losing our nickel industry because our energy costs make us uncompetitive. For $12bn we could build enough coal or gas generation to underpin the national grid, or our first major nuclear plant to do the same, but instead it is being pumped into a bungled and delayed pumped-hydro project called Snowy 2.0 that does not add a megawatt to our generating capacity – Jong-ilian.
The commitment to political fashion and populism is exposed by who the climate catastrophists target. Teal MP Monique Ryan is happy for mere taxpayers to eat insects, pay taxes and lose industries to carbon emissions gestures, but this week she refused to criticise Taylor Swift for flying private jets back and forth, shuttling the pop star and her boyfriend around the globe. “It’s not individuals who are responsible for climate change,” Ryan said. “It is large corporations and governments.”
Keep that in mind when you argue to keep your V6 diesel. During the pandemic Ryan notoriously pointed at Coalition MPs in parliament and barked instructions to “put your masks on” before video emerged of her at a large indoor event dancing, maskless – Jong-ilian.
Anyone who doubts that our parliaments, bureaucracies, boardrooms and universities are not brimful of people itching to tell others what to do just needs to look at what happened during the pandemic.
Liberty is always under threat and the “climate emergency” is the latest excuse to override it. If we are refused access to cheap and reliable energy, denied the choice of fuel for our household appliances, forced to buy cars of the government’s choosing. compelled to report carbon footprints and even pushed towards eating insects and weeds, what else will they try? Child limits cannot be far off.
The delusion afoot here is too insane for words. Any rational person with access to the most basic publicly available facts can discern that nothing Australia does will influence the climate.
Yet as we speak the federal Coalition is committed to net-zero emissions by 2050 – after Scott Morrison capitulated on this damaging goal in government.
It is time Peter Dutton formally rescinded it in favour of a gradual, sustainable (to use a fashionable word) trajectory towards carbon neutrality, embracing nuclear energy along the way, without destroying our energy grid, economy and lifestyle.
This is a blindingly obvious, rational and worthy pitch for government from a right-of-centre party. The only downside is that they will be denounced as climate deniers by the left, as I will be for writing this column. They should suck that up and get on with it.
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