Image by Vilius Kukanauskas from Pixabay
By Jo Nova
It’s like we live in a movie — everything around us is fake.
Everyone knows Australia won’t meet the fantasy 2030 target of a 43% reduction in carbon emissions, so there’s a flying-pop-tarts chance of us reaching an even higher one by 2035. Renewables investment is down 65%, farmers hate the transmission lines, offshore wind has stalled, and green hydrogen has collapsed, and yet the Labor Government is about to take the impossible and double it up. They are singing a reduction tune supposedly between 65 to 75%. Ludicrous, either way.
To make matters more absurd, not only will it not change the temperature in any measurable way, but the Australian people don’t want a higher target, and the Labor Party know that. If they thought it had any appeal, they would have sung hallelujah about the new target before the election, but they delayed it instead because they knew the voters would hate it.
Added to that, none of the Labor or Green politicians even seem to believe the scare themselves. It they did, they would have campaigned for nuclear plants 15 years ago, to save the world. Instead, NASA will get a nuclear plant on the moon before we build one in Australia. But we all “love The Science”, right?
If hypothetically, this whole charade was being fuel-injected from a foreign country trying to sabotage Australia, it might look like this.
The Government has never told us what the magic fairy cake of Net Zero will cost
It’s like buying a house and you don’t know the price.
For some reason the Business Council of Australia (BCA) is adding up what the Treasury can’t or won’t — and they calculate that a target of 70% by 2035 would *only* cost $530 billion dollars. This bargain deal, ladies and gentlemen, is just $18,000 a person, or nearly $80,000 from a family of four. Perhaps you’d like to vote on that? Nevermind.
The Business Council members include at least five banks, three tech giants, Google, Microsoft, and Meta, and many universities. All in all, the BCA is a walking-talking lobbying team for any Blob Subsidy Train. The universities dine on the grants, and the bankers have sunk “investment” in renewables, or they want to curry favor with the Chinese Communist Party, who want Australia to buy their surplus of solar panels, and wind turbines, and EVs.
But even the Business Council argues that a 70% target will cost us $200b in lost investments. Rejoice, there is a tiny bit of sense there. In an ideal world (for them) the BCA wants a moderately big target, but they don’t want a target so high it breaks the country. They also want the “certainty” of the target being legislated. They need the guaranteed gravy train. This report is totally self-serving.
Business issues $530bn warning to Labor on 2035 emissions target
By Geoff Chambers, The Australian
Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen have been warned by Australia’s largest employers that cutting emissions by 70 per cent or more would carry a price tag of up to $530bn in capital investment, as business leaders refuse to provide cover for Labor’s higher climate targets.
Ahead of the Prime Minister and the Climate Change and Energy Minister unveiling a 2035 emissions-reduction target in the next fortnight, a Business Council of Australia report reveals the government is facing extreme financial, workforce and delivery pressures to land the net-zero transition
And thus it comes to pass that a group of business traders tells us we’ll all be $10,000 richer if we buy their scheme to stop storms.
Road to Net Zero
Judith Sloan, The Australian
But here’s the thing: notwithstanding the high probability the 2030 target won’t be met – and let’s not forget that this target is legislated – both climate activists and self-interested businesses are campaigning for a ridiculously high target for 2035, of 75 per cent relative to 2005. While this target may seem absurd, fervent beliefs can be a powerful force, even if these beliefs are essentially baseless.
The report, produced by Deloitte Access Economics, reaches the extraordinary conclusion that a 75 per cent target would add $370bn to GDP by 2035, which in per capita terms is $10,000.
In addition, there would then be an additional 69,000 jobs – trivial given the number of employed is almost 15 million. We are also told that export revenues would increase by $190bn by 2050 in total, which is a rounding error. Iron ore, coal and LNG today generate almost $250bn in export income annually.
And everyone keeps a straight face. And no one says “Before we spend half a trillion dollars, shouldn’t we at least check the science?”