Writing in the supposedly ‘right-wing’ Australian, LINO bedwetter Troy Bramston claimed that supporting ‘Net Zero’ “is the entry price for credibility in politics”. Is it, though? Because poll after poll shows that ‘climate change’ is one of the lowest-ranking concerns for voters. At least, outside the wealthy, inner-suburban enclaves of the chattering classes young Troy the Boy hangs out with.
‘Net Zero’ is very much a boutique issue for those sitting atop the Maslow pyramid of needs. That’s why its most vocal proponents are all extremely upper-class twits, from the hyphenated-surname brigade glueing themselves to roads to the Swedish doom-goblin offspring of multimillionaire luvvy parents, to the private-school-blazer brigade chanting their witless slogans and waving their soft white fists at ‘school strikes for climate’. Working people in the real world are too busy struggling to pay their skyrocketing bills, where everything is going up because the cost energy is soaring – all thanks to ‘Net Zero’.
What is Australia doing to achieve Net Zero?
This is where it gets complicated, but the short version is that Australia’s Net Zero regime amounts to a series of expensive taxpayer-funded incentives, subsidies, and grants spread throughout all sectors of the economy, which aim at reducing carbon emissions in every way possible. It also includes a bunch of massive renewable energy infrastructure projects costing hundreds of millions of dollars, most of which uses technology made overseas, especially in China.
Ok, that seems fine: what’s the problem?
Well, the problem is self-evident already, unless you’re a complete idiot or an Albanese government minister, which is much the same thing.
In the past, Australia’s energy grid was almost entirely made up of coal power. Coal is abundant in Australia and generates steady, reliable electricity. That’s why power prices were so low for so long, while cheap power means greater wealth and prosperity.
However, since “climate change” became a popular cause and the media and activists started demonising coal power as if we were living in Dickensian London, successive governments began to intervene by paying subsidies and incentives to bring more and more alternative sources of energy – like solar and wind – into the grid.
These energy sources are less reliable and consistent, and are unable to maintain the steady power necessary to keep the lights on 24/7 in an advanced economy like Australia’s. The more of these power sources there are in the grid, the more supply and demand has to be managed, which drives up the price of energy for you at home.
In short: it’s adding greater complexity and less reliability into the grid and that makes things more expensive for you.
And there’s no getting around it. For all the bullshit about ‘big batteries’, the simple fact is that grids need steady baseline power. Wind and solar just cannot, will not, ever supply that. Inevitably, ‘renewables’ mean not just soaring costs but regular grid breakdowns – often catastrophic. Entire countries have been blacked out when wind and solar inevitably overload the grid.
And when the cost of energy goes up – the cost of everything goes up.
Labor’s Net Zero policy is effectively putting a thumb on the scale of every part of our economy to force it towards reducing carbon emissions; this raises the price of everything while making our energy grid less reliable […]
Big food producers use a lot of power to grow and cultivate the produce that ends up in your local supermarket, and as power gets more expensive, so does the shelf price. In addition to all this, Net Zero policies have forced farmers to adopt lower emitting practices, which can make food production less efficient and more expensive.
Energy cost is just one part of the diabolical calculus of ‘Net Zero’. More and more green tape is dedicated to over-regulating everything, such as mandating fuel efficiency standards for cars.
It’s all so obviously insane that the only way its spruikers can try and sell it is by lying through their teeth about it. Take the claim, often parroted by ‘Climate Change and Energy Minister’ “Boofhead” Bowen, that ‘wind and solar are the cheapest form of energy’.
Imagine you were hiking in the mountains and drank water from a pristine stream; you would be telling the truth if you said mountain stream water is free to drink. However, if you were to say, “mountain stream water is the cheapest form of hydration,” that would be misleading, because although it’s free to drink while you’re in the mountains, the process of capturing, storing, and then getting that water to everyone in the country would be far from free.
In the same way, solar and wind are ‘free’ in the sense that the sun shines and the wind blows for free. But capturing that energy, storing it, transmitting it, managing it, and maintaining the infrastructure that does all of that costs a lot of money.
It gets worse: imagine that the stream goes dry half of the day. Usually at the time when you’re thirstiest – which is exactly what happens with intermittent energy sources like wind and solar.
You’d also get pretty mad if eco-zealots destroyed the only reliable water pipeline available.
The unviability of coal has been a policy choice. We have abundant coal. So much so that we happily ship tonnes of it overseas for other countries to burn.
Australia’s remaining coal power stations are aged and need a lot of funding to stay operating. They have ended up this way because of deliberate decisions to demonise coal, push all funding into renewable energy, and overload the energy grid with unreliable renewables. This has resulted not only in reliable coal being crowded out by renewables, but has made energy production more expensive overall.
However, we still need coal to continue operating because renewables cannot deliver the baseload power used by Australians. So we’re in a strange position in which coal-generated power can do the job but isn’t doing enough of it to be viable long term, and renewables cannot do the job but are preventing coal from being used to do it.
On top of that, there’s no evidence that all this self-inflicted pain will result in a lick of gain. Australia is effectively imposing a drought on itself while our neighbours are leaving a fire hose running at full strength, 24/7.
Australia contributes about one per cent of global emissions. Nothing we do will change the weather or temperature one bit. Especially not when China, India, and the United States, which account for about 40 per cent of emissions, are continuing to increase emissions.
Does any of this sound remotely sane? Of course it isn’t: which is exactly why the political class think it’s the greatest idea they’ve ever had.
