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62% of Australians don’t want to pay even $10 a month for renewables

The Money Question trumps

Three quarters of Australians may believe climate change is real (so the ABC keeps telling us) but only 13% of Australians are willing to pay $1 a day or more to save the world. Anyone can tick the box “Don’t pick on me, I believe in *Climate$%@$#Change*”. But if people believed it was a threat they wouldn’t balk at paying $100 a year, which is what 62% of Australians did in the latest Newspoll.

87% of Australians think a dollar a day is too much. But hey, it’s only the planet at stake.

Newspoll, Sept 2017, Amount willing to pay renewable energy, graph.

Most Australians don’t want to pay anything more for renewable power.

The survey is still biased. There was no option to pay “less than zero”. How much are you willing to pay to get rid of renewables?

The sad thing is that most Australian’s don’t realize they’re already paying so much more.

For starters, The Australian calculated that the bill for federal renewable subsidies would be $60 billion by 2030. That’s $2500 per Australian. In a house of four, that’s $10k over 20 years or $200 per year. And that’s only the federal subsidies and schemes, it’s not the state schemes, nor the higher cost of electricity. It doesn’t include the cost of losing your job, or the extra money needed to pay bills to cover the rising electricity costs of Coles, Woolworths, Telstra, and every other company that uses electricity to make or store something you want. Someone has to pay for the blackouts, the lost production, and all the diesel generators ready in the sheds across the nation. Meanwhile the local school pays more for electricity, so you pay more in tax or fees, and so on and on for hospitals, movies, insurance, and anything with aluminium or steel in it, on it, or around it.

The latest Newspoll shows that 45% of Australians understand that renewables make electricity expensive while 24% are confused, and 22% believe that you can store spare electricity in a shoebox under the bed for a rainy day.

The latest Newspoll survey highlights the community divide on energy, with 45 per cent of voters expecting an increase in their bills from the shift to renewables while 22 per cent anticipate a ­decrease and 24 per cent expect no change. In a warning sign to the government, 60 per cent of ­Coalition voters believe renewables will increase their bills. Only 31 per cent of Labor voters and 31 per cent of Greens voters believe the same.

We live in a democracy. Let’s hold a plebescite: “Should Australians try to fix the weather in 2100?”

 A new coal-power station would take seven to eight years to build and could face fierce competition from wind and solar by the time it starts generating, given the steady fall in the cost of ­producing renewable energy.

 The only competition coal faces is in fierce subsidies. Renewables are so uncompetitive the government mandates a “fee” of  9c/kWh for those who don’t buy enough — twice the price that wholesale coal power sells out. Tell me again about fierce competition when there are no subsidies.

h/t Pat

UPDATE: 42% of US adults don’t want to pay even $12 a year to stop climate change

60% of Australians are OK with dumping Paris if they can cut their Electricity Bill

Another meaningless survey shows 4 in 5 Australians want “clean energy” (if someone else pays)

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