A recent road trip with a Boomer older sibling provided an insight into the strange workings of the Climate Cult mindset. First, there was the bizarre assertion that recent spectacular auroras in Tasmania were ‘because of climate change’. Yes, really.
Then, on sighting a vast field of solar panels, the admission that solar and wind energy are not, and never will be, up to the task of grid-level energy supply. If this seemed like a rare glimpse of sanity, what followed put paid to that faint hope. The coalition’s advocacy of nuclear energy, I was lectured, was all just a cynical smokescreen designed to buy fossil fuel companies a few more years.
Think about that. Solar and wind are insufficient, but nuclear and fossil fuels, are out. How do those two firmly held beliefs reconcile? What else are we supposed to use for energy? Vegans peddling bicycles on treadmills?
Surely I’m not the only Australian capable of seeing the fundamental incompatibility of these arguments? Certainly, our government doesn’t.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen must think the voting members of Generation Z will not wake up that his proposed $660bn outlay over 25 years to 2050 on a renewables-gas energy scheme will send power prices skyrocketing and keep the cost of living and interest rates high.
And big slabs of that $660bn Bowen investment must be replaced after about 20 years.
Um, $660 billion? And the rest. In fact, the cost of replacing oil and coal generation is in the trillions. Someone has to pay for that – and that someone is us, the mug voters.
Huge power prices and/or massive subsidies paid by taxpayers are required to make that investment economic.
I believe most young people believe their future is linked to reducing emissions. But they will also realise that their living standards will have to be dramatically reduced if that conversion to non-carbon power is badly handled.
What do you mean, “if”? This is government we’re talking about. The same people who spend billions on fleets of trains they can’t use.
Under the Bowen plan, the nation is facing massive shut-downs that can be avoided by the nation being part of the exciting alternatives that are now available. Nuclear is not the only one.
OK, so what else is there? At least the Greens are consistent in their nuttiness when they oppose gas. What other energy generation are we supposed to use, if oil, coal and gas are out? And, as we already know, wind and solar just aren’t up to the task.
Hydro is only viable in geographically blessed areas like Tasmania and parts of Scandinavia. Pumped hydro is, as Snowy 2.0 is amply demonstrating, a grossly overpriced boondoggle.
‘Biomass’ is just a fancy euphemism for ‘burning stuff’, the oldest and least-efficient form of energy humans have ever used. Every litre of ‘biofuels’ displaces a crop that feeds humans or animals. Hydrogen fuel cells are expensive and require vast amounts of electricity – generated how? – to run the electrolysis process.
Fusion, meanwhile, remains as far around the corner as it has since I was a boy.
So, what’s left?
It’s nuclear, isn’t it?
The smarter voters are figuring that out for themselves.
