Net zero would require the world to spend $US3 trillion every year to 2050

The true cost of getting to net zero has been revealed and we will have to cough up trillions of dollars every year.

The US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

The treasury secretary in the Biden – or should it now be regarded as the Harris, or indeed the who knows who’s – administration has well and truly ‘fessed up to how much pain is in your future thanks to the mindless pursuit of net zero.

Speaking in Brazil over the weekend, Janet Yellen said net zero would require the world to spend $US3 trillion – not, in total, but every year, out to 2050 (the literally mindless net zero target date).

I’d add; oh yeah; and counting; and the cost sure ain’t going to miraculously end come 2050; it’ll keep on going way beyond that.

But let’s go with Yellen’s $US3 trillion a year.

And, just to stress, that’s trillions, not those petty-cash billions that get tossed around by politicians being big-spending ‘generous’ with your money.

That adds up to at least $US75 trillion through 2050. Or around $115 trillion in our rather devalued downunder dollars.

Or close to half-a-century, give or take a year or two, of our entire annual GDP.

Just think about that: spending our entire GDP for the next 50 years just to convert the world from producing what it does now to producing exactly the same – no more, no better - but in a ‘net zero form’.

If indeed it can even be done; but that’s another matter.

Now, Yellen was of course not ‘selling’ this as a cost, as a burden on people, but as the exact opposite: as a wonderful opportunity.

What she indeed called “the single greatest economic opportunity of the 21st century,”

Well, it certainly is, for the denizens of the “Great Vampire Squid” – in the immortal, punishingly accurate description of Goldman Sachs by the great American journalist Matt Taibbi – and indeed all its fellow Wall St bloodsuckers.

To get even more mega-rich than they are now. And to provide government-mandated, and guaranteed, mega-riches for future recruits to the “vampire squid” and its fellows.

Plus, let’s not forget, our own downunder ‘Goldman Sachs Mini-me’ – Macquarie Bank.

No wonder they are all so enthusiastic for the so-called “green economy”. That’s green like a dollar bill green. And how.

The – ahem, green – picture that Yellen was painting was of all the capital that would have to be accrued and invested in ‘net zero’.

What she of course did not detail is how it has to all be paid for, plus interest. And who will be doing the paying: You.

Let’s do some of the - admittedly – broad-brush numbers.

Depending how you measure it – in US dollars, or via PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) - Australia is between 1 per cent and 1.5 per cent of the global economy.

That suggests our bill to get to net zero will run at between $45bn and $70bn a year. Every year.

Or around $2000 to $3000 per person. To stress, every year.

And, I’d suggest, that’d be a gross under-estimate anyway.

Getting the electricity system down to net zero is the ‘easy bit’. It’s getting CO2 out of the vast rest of the economy that will really take us back to the 18th century.

Originally published as Net zero would require the world to spend $US3 trillion every year to 2050