By Jo Nova
Finally, the horror show that is “renewable energy” has had one expose on the mainstream media. A full hour of hard hitting investigation into the environmental destruction, the clubbed koalas, the dead bats, and the poor whipped slaves of Africa.
For the first time, there are none of the usual caveats explaining how climate change is still a threat and we will “have to” do something.
And Liam Bartlett mentions China or Chinese involvement more than 50 times. That will bite hard with Australians feeling the cost-of-living squeeze and it will be a dark new theme for most mainstream TV watchers who are used to soaking in the green fairytale story.
The awful truth of our renewable fantasy is that it’s so uncompetitive, it’s so uneconomic, that we have the second largest reserves in the world for Cobalt, but we can’t afford to mine it, because it would push up the price or renewables even higher.
Renewable energy is so uneconomic we have to use slave labor in Africa to even pretend it’s affordable.
So they knew it was happening and kept promoting the panels and batteries anyway? How does that that moral equation pan out — we worry more about the children born in a hundred years time suffering through one extra hot day than we worry about the living children of Africa dying right now in a primitive mine?
And cobalt is still used in NMC batteries (the C stands for Cobalt) and magnets for wind turbines, and all the mobile phones, and lap tops.
–hat tip Paul Michael, Another Delcon and Jim Simpson. Thank you!
Thanks Jo, at last the real story of renewables. Many of us have known this for a while but now it is finally out in the open. The fantasy, lies and cover ups finally exposed. Long ago we stopped buying Nike products because China uses slave labor to make their products, hopefully people will start pulling away from this monstrous lie of “clean green energy”.
530
The ONLY viable solution is to extract oil from Gippsland lignite. This can be done using at least four different methods.
The Victorian State ALP government must be removed from both the upper and lower houses of parliament at the next election to even begin to save our nation.
This is unlikely to happen.
We simply have too many Australians on the take from the government to change the vote.
However, housing loans will ultimately drive us all into abject poverty, not energy prices. A credit crisis is just beginning. Bad loan provisions at our banks are going to skyrocket.
If you think this is all a bad dream then look at the numbers.
We have gone from zero to A$1 TRILLION of debt in just 20 years.
The ALP has destroyed our economy by buying votes with the help of a few Liberal Leaders who wanted to be Prime Minister at any cost.
650
The left side of Australian politics has carefully planned their assault on our nation through political entrapment based on the democratic system of government established here in 1900, Colonies former into States, Federation of States forming Commonwealth of Australia, Federation of States forming the Commonwealth or Federal Government and Constitutional Law setting out the powers and responsibilities of each level of government, Federal powers and responsibilities of a national and international or foreign affairs nature and States with much more power and responsibilities over our daily lives and even natural resources and development.
Then consider the governments.
Federal House of Representatives and Senate or State’s House of Review
State Legislative Assemblies and Legislative Councils
Local Government – Councils attached to State Governments under a Minister for Local Government.
When for example United Nations agreements and agendas are signed by the Federal Government and legislated into law the States follow up with their own legislation and regulations. To repeal requires the cooperation of lower and upper houses.
Example: 2007-2013 Rudd, Gillard & Rudd Labor legislated for carbon tax as first step towards an emissions trading scheme, and Renewable Energy Target then 32% being the start of the transition away from fossil fuels as well. 2013/15 Abbott Coalition tried to repeal RET 32% and the Senate opposition majority rejected that bill, they did however agree to abolish the carbon tax 10% on retail electricity bills.
States have the primary responsibility for electricity supply, they owned the power stations and transmission lines. After Federal Labor PM Keating signed UN Agenda 21 in 1992 the Labor NSW State Government set down plans to privatise electricity public assets, that was Carr Labor. After he retired Keneally Labor sold the first tranche of assets, Vic and SA Labor followed selling and even demolishing electricity assets. QLD did not and those assets remain in public hands.
States also have responsibilities for development application approvals, mining, building, etc. And of course including so called renewable energy projects.
The Gippsland brown coal and gas fields are VicGov responsibility.
But in recent times a private sector venture to convert brown coal (Lignite) into fertiliser and transport fuel was rejected by the Minister. Also any development applications to extract gas have been rejected.
It’s clever politics to pretend that the other side (Coalition) are no different, and to blame them when it suits Labor to do so, but please consider the system and the hurdles presented to overturn decades of spider’s web red, green and black tape laws and regulations. And that most often when a Coalition Government is in office they have a hostile Senate or Legislative Council to deal with
90
In my opinion there has been one Liberal Prime Minister and earlier, briefly, Opposition Leader of the left and like minded with Labor Green Teal agendas.
And a group of followers who had too much influence during the period 2007 to 2018. Later for a while ended start of 2026 an Opposition Leader who was elected with a narrow margin but replaced by Angus Taylor with a two-thirds of votes majority, Matt Canavan of National Party elected unopposed.
50
Oh Jo, you need to open your eyes to the opportunities.
You ask:
and later say:
The second answers the first. Ditch the heavy machinery and bring in the now unemployed kids from the Congo to do the mining. If that doesn’t pan out, I’m sure we can create our own slave class in Australia (we might be part way down that road already).
322
Not to put too fine a point on it but it was Giles Parkinson, not Jo who said
Parkinson must have forgotten that Cobalt has many other uses, including superalloys, hard metals and tools, pigments and dyes, catalysts, magnets and a range of biological and specialized uses such as radiotherapy.
280
Well reports have revealed Chinese Police are permitted to operate in Australia targeting Chinese Australians
80
Why are Channel 7 airing things like that? Is there something I am missing.
191
… things like that …
Wrong expression. “Airing the truth” is accurate, even if with the usual Daily Telegraph noisiness (needed, though, to attract mid-wit attention).
But the question remains: why is Ch7 airing the truth now ?
It’s a very interesting question.
And it’s not a mistaken flash-in-the-pan. A week or two ago, the same reporter had a real go at Bowen in a press conference. Bowen’s thuggish reaction was similar to that he showed about 4 months ago when Uhlmann did the same thing at another press conference.
Perhaps clubbing koalas to death has stirred a few guilty feelings ? Who knows ?
400
That journalist has since been banned from attending the Minister’s media briefings
120
You’re missing that investigative journalism has all but died, especially amongst the mainstream networks. There’s little incisive pockets of hope that pop up in MSM but more will appear on substack.
60
Bravo Liam Bartlett. I watched it in a couple of days ago and here is a quick précis of key points I picked up:
Blood Cobalt from Congo where child labour rules, and criminally mined Copper are just the tip of the iceberg.
This is also about environmental destruction on a scale not seen in Australia before.
How about seven times the footprint of Tasmania of devastation for so called ‘green and clean’ energy?
The conditions imposed on residential developers are way tougher than the conditions imposed on green energy farms. It is sickening.
We are being taken for mugs and it makes me very angry. Try a tailings dam in the middle of Tasmania’s Tarkine forest.
Australians are underwriting a project owned by the Chinese government.
The only upside is the $80 billion class action against Sino-Metals.
I challenge you to watch this in full and tell me I’ve no reason to be concerned and that Chris Bowen does not have cognitive bandwidth issues. Watch his weasel words at the end…
There is a print version here.
440
“The only upside is the $80 billion class action against Sino-Metals.”
Doesn’t really matter, walk away and pay nothing in damages to anyone.
140
I just watched another Bartlett docu this time about the Dirty Cobalt Mining and deaths/environmental destruction in Philippines from Chinese companies. It seems to be a theme now, has the Overton Window window finally moved?
150
Bowen is just doing as his masters tell him and is rewarded. Just look at the cushy non-job he has got at the next COP party.
120
Did the program mention the Chinese buying the village then telling everybody ” you work for us now, chop chop”.
80
Yes it did , Liam Bartlett mentioned that specifically, the Chinese bought the cobalt rich land the village sits on and everyone in the village must work in the mine.. including the children.
130
Just incredible, how do they get away with it.
50
Entrenched corruption.
60
Ronin,
U.N. approved no doubt !!!!
20
Thanks again Jo for linking to the channel 7 Spotlight program and Liam Bartlett aired a similar program last year on China’s cesspit mining in Indonesia.
Incredible cruelty and destruction yet the left wing donkeys just shut their eyes and yapped about more loony W & S disasters + EVs for Australia.
360
Steven Nowakowski comments on Labor’s green dream and how implementing such policies adversely affects the environment. “What I see happening across the nation, in particular Queensland, is atrocious, abhorrent behaviour; this should not be happening in this day and age,” Nowakowski is tracking the green dream projects across Australia and the environmental impacts are not just limited to building wind and solar farms. The transmission lines impact on the farming sector is generating as much or more antipathy than extinction rebellion protestors. It’s about time the worm turned.
271
The climate congregation inhabiting Renew Economy on FB didn’t like it when I wrote that “Renew Ecomedy is to science what Stephen Hawking is to football.”
320
That boofhead on Renew economy was particularly butthurt about the Bartlett expose on cobalt.
90
See my comment at #25. If you’re still on that FB page you might like to point that out to the RE group.
20
I can’t find a link to Liam Bartlett’s Indonesian video about EVs and rare metals etc aired on April 2 last year.
But here’s some of the content I found and Indonesians today are literally “dying for EVs”.
https://tvblackbox.com.au/page/2025/04/02/7news-spotlight-exposes-dark-truth-behind-ev-industry/
.
[Link added: The Spotlight episode from last year that you’re referring to.
“China’s EV shame: the deadly reality behind the ‘clean, green’ electric vehicles”. https://youtu.be/SNag4j0nmKU?si=TVomJ3QSUsRQTO55
Raquel]
170
Didn’t they try to deflect away and say the nickel ‘was for other uses’, not EV batteries.
20
Sometimes for MSN there is copycat type programming. Someone at Ch9 might look at the ratings for this Spotlight episode and want a piece of that. If that’s successful, then maybe Ch10 will do an expose. Gee, Albanese might have watched it and will call a Royal Commission. I can remember Turnbull doing the same after watching an ABC story on aboriginals in NT detention. But, I jest. Anyway, I wouldn’t know, I never watch the MSM these days.
110
Chained slaves, they rowed, slept and died,
To make galley ships gracefully glide,
Now renewable zealots ignore,
How so much cobalt ore,
Is mined by horrors they would hide.
290
Hi Mike Reed here,
If you want to get the entire story and more of the truth that will make you even more sad
and literally make you really depressed that it will literally bring tears to your eyes then read Siddarth Kara’s book Cobalt Red.Its a brilliant expose of death, maiming and even murder associated with artisanal mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo -should make all
EV owners and Greens ashamed of their blindness to this inhumanity for the sake of some
“Transition “ to I don’t what!!!
Cheers Mike Reed
220
Was not Pope Bob recently in the Congo – whether the Republic or the Demonic Republic, there’s only a river separating them – singing his praises (in Latin?) to peace, love, brotherhood and Carbon Zero™️ paradise?
Belgium’s King Leopold left a nasty legacy deep in the Heart of Darkness, along with many an adventurer since – surely we don’t have to wait for Saint Leonardo diCrapio to star in a film, Blood Cobalt, before famous people [sic] make a stand?
Diamonds are, after all, pure carbon: 💎
180
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, and do no evil
40
There must be a market for stickers to put on EVs stating:
“Proudly powered by child labour”.
60
When BOBowen dismissed Bartlett’s questions, the other ‘journalists’ never took the opportunity to ask the same questions.
They sat there meekly, accepting BOBowen’s weak answers.
Everything in the Spotlight item has been known and spoken about in venues such as this one for many years.
430
And yet the same Bob Brown in his last address to the National Press Club in Canberra included in his comments his “dream” for a “world parliament” and no international borders.
Isn’t that the United Nations after establishment left infiltrator’s objective, as first considered late 1800s by the Fabian Society of Marxists in England?
80
It is easy to spot the ‘bought and paid for journos’.
20
This episode of Spotlight has to be shown at every school and be part of the curriculum. Bowen gets away with it because of decades of propaganda in the education system.
The wheel is starting to turn , it’s time to take it up a notch.
290
First, have the students watch “An Inconvenient Truth”, then the Spotlight program, and ask them to research, contrast and compare.Those able, may actually learn something.
30
There comes a time when the media WILL turn on a government – as Rudd found out when Murdoch turned against him (and his own Ministers), as Morrison (because he wasn’t Shorten) and Turnbull found out, as even Hawke and Keating found out – following atrocious policy decisions.
The legacy media see the writing on the wall in falling viewing numbers and must be more ‘controversial’. Currently, telling the truth IS controversial.
This is the first step in the media actually doing the job they should have done pre-Albo’s second term.
230
Boosting Australia’s Fuel Security by Prime Minister Scott Morrison 2020 (Glasgow COP 2021 and did not sign up to net zero as shown here by my posts many times);
https://www.scottmorrison.com.au/media/boosting-australias-fuel-security
40
” renewable is a secure form of energy.The Australian sun cannot be interrupted ”
this must be the most moronic statement I have ever heard, it ignores passing planets, comets, moons, clouds, nights, birds and the perpetual dust cloud that settles on solar panels, and the occasional hailstorm.
what I find particularly interesting is that nobody laughed. journalists were obviously not listening, that is, they were not assigning meaning to the words from his mouth and thinking about what they meant. They were NPCS, props, in the enabling theatre of democracy
170
BOB’s statement there should have had the whole room laughing him to scorn.
170
Meanwhile, the Chinese are pressing ahead with small (210MW) modular helium cooled high temp reactors. They have developed this from the graphite pebble-bed design which the Germans sold to S. Africa and subsequently on to China. My late father said that the key advantage of this tall cylindrical reactor was its ability to remain within safe temperatures after a loss of coolant pumps. He never succeeded in over-coming the issue of containing 800K liquid helium but that was 40 years ago. We now have better materials for bearings and seals that are able to operate at dull red colour temps.
Alternatives are a nice distraction and good for running my domestic fridge and LED lighting but absurd as a National Grid main-stay so it’s good to see someone drawing focus onto the realities of intermittent low-Wattage power generation. Gradually, Australia will wake up and use its huge Uranium resources for power and keep its oil and gas for industrial/chemical/automotive purposes though I suspect that might be long after I’m gone.
100
The case for micro reactors in Australia, replace the hundreds of diesel generators now supplying most of the off grid electricity here;
https://a7dffb77-e855-4fa6-bd37-0bc063cdb46e.filesusr.com/ugd/e63596_57f326cd401146e09580d9c4f2024f51.pdf
70
Did you note former Greens Leader Bob Brown pointing out that if Chinese investment involved mining gets the green light from our governments?
71
Every 20-25 years wind turbines need to be removed and replaced, meaning replaced if the shareholders are willing to invest more money starting with $500-700,000 for every unit removal and then replacement costs. Every installation and many more planned and yet to be built must have a feeder transmission line to main transmission lines, and firming back up costs, and extra main transmission lines where installations are far from the existing main transmission lines. And none of that includes upgrading town and suburban local grid infrastructure to supply the renewables EV plans.
The estimated final cost exceeds two trillion dollars for the interconnected grid areas of TAS, SA, VIC, NSW/ACT & QLD.
Plus the 20-25 year replacement cycles forever more.
110
Dutton Plan extract;
Environmental benefits
If you are serious about meeting our international climate change targets, then you must include zero emission nuclear as part of your energy mix. Zero emission nuclear power plants produce no air pollution or carbon emissions.
Zero emission nuclear power plants also use much less land and raw materials than large scale renewable projects. For instance, a next generation nuclear power station, including all auxiliary buildings and the security perimeter would cover about 45 acres (roughly the size of a mid-sized shopping centre). For every MWh of electricity produced:
Wind requires 360 times more land than nuclear.
Solar requires 75 times more land than nuclear.
In addition, unlike a modern nuclear plant, which can be plugged into the existing grid, Labor’s expensive renewables-only grid requires up to 28,000km of new transmission lines.
By reducing impacts on our landscape, zero-emissions nuclear will not only protect regional communities, but our environment and wildlife.
81
Did Dutton have a plan?? The entire election campaign was a painful to watch, dithering, half arsed mumbling of poorly articulated policies, especially the nuclear one. It should have and could have been a “Knock them out of the park” policy to combat Labor’s lies and ridiculous wind/solar/battery plan costing hundreds of billions and projected to cost in the Trillions but no… Liberals just handed them the win.
100
I agree, the plan was tabled and published, and for whatever reasons not well presented, but Labor Green Teals did manage a major misinformation campaign at that time, remember the $600 billion they claimed would be cost of nuclear power stations, ignoring that for that amount of money based on 5,600MW Arab Emirates Barakah nuclear power station of 4 units Australia could have maybe ten of them, more installed capacity than the largest interconnected grid here requires even in peak demand periods
50
Australia Needs Nuclear
https://www.australianeedsnuclear.org.au
91
Australia Strengthens Fuel Security
https://www.minister.industry.gov.au/ministers/taylor/media-releases/australia-strengthens-fuel-security-new-us-arrangement
Does this ministerial media statement suggest adherence to net zero emissions?
40
Without cobalt, a trace element, no Vitamin B12
80
And by the way, lithium, another trace element, is vital for brain health
40
Yep, but not in exploding batteries I surmise.
40
What happened in the past is in the past and we voters can do nothing about it.
We can however look at history and that from late 1940s to early 1970s the Coalition governed Australia very well, nation building a priority, economy growing, jobs easy to obtain, post war standard of living improved markedly, and so on.
Then a brief Labor government disaster and followed by a recession that was only just recovering in 1983 when Labor was returned to government. By 1990 another and worse still recession preceded by a Vic State basket case economy (Rust Belt of Victoria) late 1980s.
Howard Coalition 1996-2007 repaid the debt and produced budget surpluses most of the following years, created the sovereign wealth Future Fund, handed over to Rudd Labor zero debt and a $22 billion budget surplus.
By 2013 every year in deficit, debt including 2013/14 unfunded Labor Budget commitments exceeded $400 billion and Coalition 2014/15 Budget was called a budget repair budget and forecast that returning to surplus would take a few more years …. and so on
90
THE REAL REASON solar and wind never should be used for large scale power generation is the potential to have much of it destroyed by severe weather. Unless you have seen a lot of airline flying and been exposed to big thunderstorms you cannot know how violent they can be. We have not seen really severe thunderstorms in Australia for close to 40 years and that is why solar and wind have not been taken out by such weather. I flew for 54 years from 1965 until 2019 and in that time saw lines of storms with tops up around 70,000’which did tremendous damage. One such line on the 6th of November 1972 south west of Brisbane destroyed most of the crops on the Darling Downs and six inch hail fell over wide areas. Above 40,000’in height storm development causes extremely severe down draughts with strong hail and lightning – the 18th of January 1985 storm which hit Brisbane had radar returns measured at 76,000′, blew all the windows out of the old airport control tower with recorded guests up above 185 k.p.h.and Brisbane was short of glass for two years.
This sort of weather can give you real blackouts and will return. On the 25th of November 1988 I was in command of an evening flight from Brisbane to Cairns where Townsville had been closed all day with storms and as we proceeded up the coast we had to divert over Charters Towers where we could see a huge 50 mile wide storm sitting over Townsville with tops around 65,000′. At this time we were then advised that every aerodrome behind us down the coast had closed with severe thunderstorms and then told that our destination Cairns had now closed. Mt.Isa had similar weather.
We had no alternative but to continue to Cairns where at the last minute visibility lifted to enable an approach. That weather is not recorded in archives anywhere by the BOM as on many other times when severe weather was encountered in the 1970s and 1980s. I relate this to emphasize that politicians and current BOM staff have no experience of this sort of weather and have never factored in the damage that will result. A December 2005 encounter by a twin engine Piper Chieftain over Condoblin in NSW flew along a line of thunderstorms at 10,000′ and had the right engine and wings ripped from the aircraft – to think wind turbines put up on mountain ridges for so called stable or long term power generation will survive severe storms is insanity.
220
Thanks for that RK, a pilot lives or dies by the weather, you could nearly write a book on your experiences.
80
As a further comment on the BOM,when the recent cyclone Narelle passed between Coen and Lockhart River on Cape York they stopped any recordings at Coen at 2.35 AM where it passed about 25 n.m. to the north and restored it two days later on the 22nd of March. It was only ever a marginal Cat.1 with a 52 knot gust and area pressure of 998 at Coen at that time and a top gust of 115 and pressure of 986 at Lockhart River and never anywhere near a CAT 4.
A friend who has a cattle station SE of Blackall in Qld had reason to ring the BOM in February 2022 where the guy said you have had 300 mm of rain up there – my friend said no, nowhere in the Blackall area had anyone received more than 180 mm but because their AWS on his station Gillespie,said 300, that is what went in their records. Likewise the AWS flood indicator on the Barcoo River fronting the property showed a one metre higher flood level than what existed but the higher figure was recorded. Straight out lies. Like wise cyclones Yasi, Ita and Marcia were never more than Cat 3 not their recorded Cat 5.as shown by their own data.
30
The article by Renew Economy has the headline:
and the article states:
It has that in quotation marks as if Bartlet actually said that.
I did a key word search in the transcript using “piece”, because it’s in the quote, but it does not exist anywhere in the transcript.
I did a key word search on “so-called” and it does not appear anywhere in the transcript.
I did a key word search on “today” and it does not appear anywhere in the transcript.
I did a key word search on “technology” and it also does not appear anywhere in the transcript.
I did a key word search on “vehicle” and it appears once in the transcript (33 min and 2 sec) as part of the word vehicles (plural) in a sentence relating to copper and zinc, not cobalt.
These words are all in the quote Renew Economy attributes to Bartlett in quotation marks in reference to cobalt, but none are in the transcript. Interestingly the word cobalt is not in quotation marks in the Renew Economy claim. But cobalt does appear in the transcript. 33 times.
The claim by Renew Economy is that Bartlett said it “at the start of the program”. I have watched the intro and the first few minutes and I did not hear Bartlett say the words that Renew Economy has put in quotation marks.
The closest I can find is at 1 min 57 sec where Bartlett says, “If there’s a single mineral that sparked our renewable revolution, it’s cobalt. It has been the key element in practically every storage battery on the planet. From our EVs to our homes to the monster batteries now straddling the outback.”
Note that Bartlett says “has been” (in the past) and “practically every“, not every.
Renew Economy has written what Bartlett said to be as, ” “Every battery, every electric vehicle, every piece of so-called clean energy technology today” uses cobalt”.
At 2 min 53 sec Bartlett does say, “Men, women, even children forced to work in medieval conditions just so countries like Australia can have cobalt for our renewable energy grid like the thousands of massive batteries we’ll need to store all that wind and solar power.”
This is saying that cobalt is still being used for batteries. Which is true. But Bartlett did not say every one of the batteries we’ll need will be cobalt.
Now maybe there is a slim possibility the transcript has omitted whole sentences or changed words. And I haven’t watched the whole program. So I apologise to RE if the quote RE has written is word for word accurate. But it seems to me that Renew Economy is the one that has fallen over at the first fact check, and is inventing quotes and putting words in Bartlett’s mouth.
The irony of RE starting out their article referring to mis and disinformation.
100
I posted essentially the same comment on the reneweconomy website, where comments are open under the article. Nearly 24hrs later my comment is still awaiting approval.
10
More dirty secrets…:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-22/foi-documents-on-adelaide-cop31-un-climate-conference-bid/106569252
The documents total 260 pages, but more than 200 pages remain redacted.
Justifying her decision to keep a section about the risks of hosting the event under wraps, Ms Carter (the Ombudsman) said: “While I accept the risks and difficulties are somewhat moot given Adelaide will not be hosting COP31, the information is directly relevant to and unlikely to change in relation to the organisation of logistics for future major events.”
Another section, containing advice from KPMG that is “largely not publicly known”, remained redacted because “the agency might use this same information to inform other hosting bids”.
20
Somebody in the UK Labour Party force mad Ed Miliband to watch this documentary, for heavens sake.
30
Watching Bowen reminds me of things my dad told me about the unerring certainty of abject stupidity.
50