‘Yet another Australian activist judge, usurping the role of parliament in a democratic society, has given Lawfare’s economic saboteurs a new lease of life. If you thought that environmentalists’ abuse of the legal system in their mission to destroy fossil fuels, whatever the economic costs, was already excessive, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Federal Justice Mordecai Bromberg’s incredible 27 May determination that the Morrison government has a duty of care to protect Australian children from climate change devastation and death, requires that duty to be met before approving any further fossil fuel developments that add to CO2 emissions. It ushers in an unlimited round of legal battles aimed at destroying Australia’s biggest export earner (fossil fuels – coal, oil, LNG – together exceed iron ore) that are a key element in our post-Covid economic recovery. From now on, every governmental approval can be actionable under the common law for negligence on the basis that the ‘catastrophic climate change’ interests of children (unspecified as to age!) ‘have not been adequately taken into account’.’https://spectator.com.au/2021/06/business-robbery-etc-70/
Australian Federal Government
You will never miss that which you never had. However, those in the USA and Australia have enjoyed many many years of freedoms such as freedom of movement, speech etc. However, this China virus seems to be eroding those freedoms from us. Consider this! ‘Australia’s drug regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), is considering referring Facebook posts containing claims about COVID vaccine deaths to the police after a post showing Labor backbencher Julian Hill getting his vaccine was met with mass pushback from vaccine skeptics.
The post was ratioed with almost twice the number of comments to engagements – a common sign that a post is unpopular.
Many of the comments noted that the vaccine is “experimental,” described Hill’s post as “propaganda,” and voiced their objections to the vaccine.
But The Guardian Australia focused on alleged posts from some Facebook users that purportedly contained an image that cited the TGA and claimed that COVID-19 vaccines have caused more than 200 deaths.
The figure is a reference to the TGA’s disclosure in its May 27 COVID-19 vaccine weekly safety report that it has received “210 reports of deaths following immunisation.” However, the TGA insists that only one of these deaths was caused by the vaccines.
After The Guardian Australia contacted the TGA, it said the alleged posting of claims that the vaccine had caused more than 200 deaths were “particularly concerning” and that it would consider referring these posts to the federal police.
Additionally, the TGA noted that it’s a criminal offense, punishable by two years in prison, to represent oneself as a commonwealth body or claim to act on behalf of one.
The Guardian Australia also contacted Facebook which swiftly removed the posts for violating its far-reaching “COVID-19 misinformation” rules.
Despite the threat of police referrals from the TGA and Facebook removing the posts, Hill demanded that Australia’s health minister, Greg Hunt, take further action to “combat vaccine hesitancy, and the bat shit crazy conspiracy theories circulating online.”
He also warned “Australians will continue to be exposed to restrictions and lockdowns…until enough of the population is vaccinated.”
These developments come months after Australian lawmaker Craig Kelly had one of his Facebook posts about masks removed after complaints from the opposition party. Days after this post removal, his account was temporarily suspended and he was then permanently banned a couple of months later.
Facebook also expanded its crackdown on vaccine skeptic content last month by starting to “fact-check” and suppress individual users that repeatedly share misinformation. This followed whistleblowers exposing the tech giant’s secret algorithm that suppresses negative vaccine experiences.’https://reclaimthenet.org/australia-drug-regulator-facebook-vaccine-police/
Boy, am I glad I don’t live in the Communist state of Victoria, Australia. Victoria and in particular melbourne is one of the most restrictive China virus anti-protest, anti-democratic states and cities in all of Australia. That’s saying something as the other states are not far behind but they have some ways to go yet to treat their citizens like Victoria’s Labor Socialist government.
Australian politicians are pushing Australia into an energy crisis. They have plans to make the earth safe from co2 plus making energy much cheaper. Oh, yes they also live in fantasy land!
‘Wind and solar power’s hopeless intermittency has forced rent seekers to engineer yet another fraud: hydrogen gas – which is to be purportedly produced using wind and solar’s occasional and chaotic output. Where wind and solar have never made any sense, the hydrogen proposition is completely bonkers.
Defying the laws of physics and thermodynamics – just for starters – the economics would make hydrogen gas produced using already heavily subsidised wind and solar the most expensive energy in human history.
And yet, the same class of dimwitted politicians are signing up in feverish earnest, as if they’re about to back a surefire Melbourne Cup winner.
As with wind and solar power, it’s the same too-good-to-be-true pitch directed at the starry-eyed, gullible and naïve. All, of course, in the name of obtaining a stream of taxpayer back subsidies that will outlast religion.
STT, always ready to rain on the renewable energy rent seeker’s parade, is delighted to present the following interview between former South Australian Senator, Cory Bernardi and Professor Ian Plimer.
Professor Plimer is an Australian geologist, professor emeritus of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne, professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide, and the director of multiple mineral exploration and mining companies. He has published numerous scientific papers, 7 books and is one of the co-editors of Encyclopedia of Geology. And is the author of The Climate Change Delusion and The Great Electricity Ripoff’ – available from Connorcourt Publishing by clicking here.
Not for the first time, and not for the last time, Ian Plimer brings reality to bear at a time when delusion reigns supreme.’ For the entire article go to https://stopthesethings.com/2021/03/28/scam-alert-hydrogen-hoax-the-next-great-renewable-energy-fraud/
‘Few countries issue both “domestic” and “international travel” passports to their citizens. Russia, Ukraine and North Korea are among those few, and it’s easy to guess that if a person requires a specific document to cross the border, then the state thoroughly controls such movement, which was the case in the USSR.’https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/328576-why-russians-have-2-passports
Now post China virus the ‘Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has suggested that vaccine passports will likely be a requirement for travel within the country’s states in an interview marking the second anniversary of his election.
Speaking to 9News, the prime minister responded to a question asking if “internal vaccine passports” would be necessary for travel between Australian states, Morrison stated that “all of those arrangements will have to be put in place,” adding that the concept was something his government would “have to work with the states and territories on.”https://www.rebelnews.com/australian_prime_minister_suggests_covid_passport_for_travel_between_states?utm_campaign=rb_5_19_21&utm_medium=email&utm_source=therebel
What other freedoms will Australians lose post China virus?
Speaking the truth in this present society will all too often have a real personal cost.
Last night we watched the Australian treasurer give his bags of money to the various groups such as mental health, indigenous organizations, domestic violence and old age care to name a few. It seemed that the government had no goal of getting out of the debt it had put itself into during the China virus. As one rightly wrote ‘Pop culture obsessives will never forget the famous episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show where the queen of America gave everyone in the audience — all 276 of them — a free Pontiac. What is less often remembered is that everyone who got a car also got a tax bill of $US6,000 with it. Nice.
This evening, when Josh Frydenberg stepped up to the dispatch box and delivered his ‘”you got a government program, you got a government program, you got a government program and you got a government program” budget, there was also a sting in its tail — a nice tax liability; a tax liability that will need to be paid for by our children and grandchildren.
One must really wonder what Frydenberg meant last year when he declared his admiration for Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Maybe it was really nostalgia for the music of his eighties youth:
Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I’ve travelled the world and the seven seas
Ev’rybody’s lookin‘ for something.
Sweet dreams indeed. When the Treasurer highlighted calls “for a Reagan-Thatcher style supply-side revolution to repair the budget deficit, repay public debt and restore Australia’s lost prosperity ”, who thought he would have delivered the biggest deficit and biggest debt in Australia’s history — so large, in fact, that Wayne Swan probably threw his crystal “Galaxy’s Greatest Treasurer” trophy at the television in jealousy.
Perhaps Frydenberg’s budget strategy of childcare and age care subsidies was inspired by putting a twist of his own on the words of Ronald Reagan: “Government does not solve problems; it subsidises them”. Perhaps he was trying to give the wisdom of Margaret Thatcher a run. It was, after all, Thatcher who said “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money” — and in this budget, the Treasurer is actually attempting to run out of other people’s money.
It so seems that the inspiration for today’s budget came from “travelling the world and the seven seas”, from seeing how those fiscal paragons of Zimbabwe and Venezuela spent their way to increased inflation. They did manage to stimulate inflation to increase wages. Unfortunately, though, prices increased much faster.
But this budget is the budget of the modern Liberal Party of Australia; the party that believes that Edmund Burke was a fool for suggesting that society was a partnership between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.
Bugger the dead and the to be born. Take therefore no thought for the morrow. Party on, dude. Par-tay!
I don’t know about you but I have come to reconsider almost everything the state and federal governments tell me. Here in Australia during the China virus almost all one heard from local and federal governments was “We are following the science”. There are many problems with that statement but one is that they were all doing something different so therefore the science they were following was not the same. Anyway, the following article deals with this fact that governments do LIE to us! Dr. Guliuzza write that ‘Perhaps my parents were naïve. They raised me to respect my teachers, the government, and other authorities, and to believe these entities acted in my best interests and certainly wouldn’t lie to me. I was warned about the duplicity of politicians and used-car salesmen, but they were mostly grouped in classes by themselves.
Now I know I was misled by these authorities on some very important things. For instance, in biology class I was taught as scientific fact a totally fanciful—and atheistically religious—story that “survival of the fittest” caused the evolution of life on Earth. Disseminating that lie was an abuse of youthful trust in authority.
The lying has gotten far worse. Back then, I never felt institutional coercion to join a perverse government-led movement that affirms as truth many things I and most other people can clearly see are false. For example, until recently it was basic common sense to recognize that male and female are the two biological sexes. Today, anyone daring to speak common sense is publicly pummeled with disparaging names (or worse) by members of a rapidly growing deviant movement. They use a hostile crowd to systematically isolate people from each other by making everyone afraid to be associated with the pummeled person lest it also happen to them—a method to strong-arm conformity in thinking and control the behavior of an entire group.
As many Christians ponder whether to acknowledge more than the two sexes Christ created, they need to consider more than the “science” that floods schools and the media. The real issue is whether Christians, pastors, and seminary presidents will reject clear biblical teaching just to avoid the nasty social outrage against their ministries or themselves if they dare speak a truth the world finds offensive—that male and female are the only two human sexes.
Christians have faced the decision of whether to cast aside clear biblical teaching and embrace the world’s so-called science for a far longer period when it comes to Darwinian selection and evolution. Lies spread by government-sponsored institutions can be so absurd that they require years of forced, repetitive indoctrination for people to believe them. One government lie sits atop them all: that over a time frame far too slow for anyone to observe—and without the mind and power of God—life spontaneously started and nature exercised a type of selective agency to mold that “proto-life” into the diversity of creatures on Earth. We may not know how many people silently question this lie because dissenting views are quashed through government-tolerated academic oppression.
For illustration we’ll consider the above-mentioned lie that humans can be classified into a sex other than male and female. Perhaps it will serve as a contemporary wake-up call for Christians to refuse to live by the world’s lies.
Biological Sex and the Institutional Lie
In George Orwell’s classic novel 1984, the Ministry of Truth produced lying propaganda and the Ministry of Love dispensed torture. In Orwell’s farsighted story, reality was totally inverted through the government’s highly coordinated actions to manipulate its citizens’ thinking. What’s remarkable in the book is that almost all citizens eventually became willing promoters of government lies themselves.
An NBC News report demonstrates the combined power of government, academia, and the media to bring about a 1984-like adoption of total nonsense. In this case, even highly educated leaders of independent corporations participate. NBC stated that “[the brand] Always announced it will remove the Venus symbol from its menstruation products packaging” in response to protests by “transgender and nonbinary people” who were born female but now believe they’re male.1
Procter & Gamble, Always’ parent company, has come to regret placing the female symbol on their packages. In response to the outrage of these “men,” Always now recognizes that the packages were offensive “by not acknowledging that they [men], too, can experience menstruation,” and they dismiss the criticisms of people upset over the symbol’s removal as being “rooted in the misconception that [male] transgender and nonbinary people cannot experience menstruation—a claim medical experts have debunked.”1
How do you get people to assent to completely bizarre flights of fancy? By repeating them incessantly. Several months after their story on Always, NBC added a personal account and reported, “When transgender model and activist Kenny Ethan Jones experienced his first period, he faced both physical and psychological pain.”2 Kenny Jones was born female but is now considered by many (including “medical experts”) to be male. Perhaps to make it easier for readers to jettison their common sense, NBC adds Jones’ personal testimony:
“Having a period already causes me a lot of [gender] dysphoria, but this dysphoria becomes heightened when I have to shop for a product that is labeled as ‘women’s health’ and in most cases, is pretty and pink,” Jones explained.2
How powerful are the combined forces of government, academia, and the media targeted against individual citizens? Pretty powerful, it seems. After presenting stories like that of Kenny Jones, it’s as if those in power sit back and watch to see if ordinary people will compliantly speak about “his first period” without a tinge of humiliation over the mental confusion or muddled judgment needed to state something so nonsensical. A power that conditions a mass of people to embrace such ridiculous notions should grab the attention of Christians.
We are witnessing authorities use the stamp of scientific authority as a propaganda tool to dishonestly assert that something everyone knows is true—that men cannot have monthly cycles—has been debunked. Most people likely resent being coerced into accepting something that has never been observed and is utterly foolish.
What many Americans don’t recognize is that the train long ago left the station and took our country along the line to nonsensical beliefs. That happened when they swallowed the lie that over a long period of time one kind of creature can morph into another—something else that has never been observed. What’s worse is that these lies about both evolving creatures and interchangeable sexes are not just ludicrous, they’re intellectually and morally perverse.
Government Perverting Its God-Ordained Role
God denounces the government-sanctioned corruption of truth: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20). Moral perversion goes hand in hand with governments acting in perverted ways.
Two passages in the New Testament detail the God-ordained role of government. Those in authority today should rule by these mandates: “For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil….For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil” (Romans 13:3-4); and government leaders “are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good” (1 Peter 2:14).
The Bible’s teaching is plain. Government is responsible to promote good and punish evil, but today’s rulers often oppress—if not outright persecute—people doing good and exult in the evil behavior they promote, which they mischaracterize as good. The destruction of the moral fiber of its citizens through lying and coercive tactics is a perversion of government’s mandate and authority.
Lessons Learned from the Soviet Union
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1974Image credit: Bert Verhoeff
Citizens of the United States now face increased institutional deception. People in other lands have endured habitual governmental lying, and their experiences may prove useful to Christians who refuse to live by the world’s lies.
Last year someone forwarded the link to a very helpful essay titled “Live Not by Lies” written in 1974 by the late Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn’s essay isn’t long, and I’d recommend that everyone read it since the actions he encourages other Soviets to adopt are valuable for Americans today. He sets the stage of the sad state of isolation and fear oppressing the Soviet people.
There was a time when we dared not rustle a whisper….[We] heartily complain to each other of all they [the government] are muddling up, of all they are dragging us into!…They put whomever they want on trial, and brand the healthy as mentally ill….Already a universal spiritual demise is upon us…while we continue to smile sheepishly….We have so hopelessly ceded our humanity that for the modest handouts of today we are ready to surrender up all principles, our soul, all the labors of our ancestors, all the prospects of our descendants—anything to avoid disrupting our meager existence…..[We] fear only to take a civic stance! We hope only not to stray from the herd, not to set out on our own.3
Solzhenitsyn then explains why government-sanctioned violence alone can never enslave an entire population. Real enslaving power is wielded through institutional lying.
But it [breaking the oppressive cycle] will never come…if we all, every day, continue to acknowledge, glorify, and strengthen it, if we do not, at the least, recoil from its most vulnerable point. From lies….Violence ages swiftly….To prop itself up, to appear decent, it will without fail call forth its ally—Lies. For violence has nothing to cover itself with but lies, and lies can only persist through violence. And it is not every day and not on every shoulder that violence brings down its heavy hand: It demands of us only a submission to lies, a daily participation in deceit—and this suffices as our fealty.3
Thus, the road to freedom is to refuse to live by lies. “And therein we find, neglected by us, the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies!…For when people renounce lies, lies simply cease to exist. Like parasites, they can only survive when attached to a person.” The first of eight vital behaviors Solzhenitsyn says are necessary to shake off enslavement begins with each citizen declaring they “will not write, sign, nor publish in any way, a single line distorting, so far as he can see, the truth.”3
Creationists have historically demonstrated the courage to resist institutional lying. Maybe that’s why the world uses the name “creationist” as a title of derision. Nevertheless, we must remember “let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12). If we don’t want to unknowingly advance any of the world’s lies, shouldn’t we examine ourselves to see whether our own minds have been “evolutionized” to some degree?
Recognizing How Lies Are Built into Terminology
Evolutionists invent terms all the time that simultaneously express evolutionary concepts and are used as more evidence for evolution. For instance, the literature is full of terms like convergent evolution, vestigial organs, pseudogenes, and highly conserved sequences. These terms have a built-in presupposition of evolution that makes them inherently misleading. Thus, just by speaking the jargon, a person is assisting the deceitful evolutionary indoctrination of society. The same type of built-in lying occurs when we talk about people as being transgender—as if that’s a real state of being—just because the world imagines more than two human sexes.
Evolutionary theory is full of imaginary, misleading scenarios. The most egregious is when nature is personified, presented as exercising agency, and then invoked as a substitute god to explain the origin and diversity of life. Selectionists project onto the environment abilities to “select,” “favor,” “act,” “send information,” and similar verbs indicating the work of an intelligent agent. The terminology they use therefore embeds a potent lie—that nature has some type of innate volition. The constant personification of nature as exercising creative agency transfers credit from the Lord Jesus as Creator to the creation itself…the principal lie described in Romans 1:25.
The denial of two biological sexes as illustrated by the Kenny Jones nonsense shows how serious the scope of these institutional lies and the coercion to conform is. The challenge facing Christians is whether we will cast aside clear biblical teaching and embrace the world’s so-called science. We belong to the Lord Jesus, who promised, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31-32). Christians need to be a sanctuary of truth; we must refuse to live by the world’s lies.
References
- Aviles, G. Always to ax female symbol from sanitary products packages in nod to trans users. NBC News. Posted on nbcnews.com October 21, 2019, accessed February 4, 2021.
- Atkins, C. For transgender men, pain of menstruation is more than just physical. NBC News.Posted on nbcnews.com January 11, 2020, accessed February 4, 2021.
- Solzhenitsyn, A. Live Not by Lies, February 12, 1974. Posted on solzhenitsyncenter.org.’https://www.icr.org/article/12773/?utm_source=phplist9395&utm_medium=email&utm_content=HTML&utm_campaign=May+Acts+%26+Facts+Is+Now+Available
‘Facebook has permanently banned the official page of Australian MP Craig Kelly for sharing “misinformation about COVID-19.”
Formerly a member of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Liberal Party, Kelly became an independent after getting into a dispute with the prime minister and health experts over the content he had been posting on his Facebook page.
In February, Facebook temporarily suspended Kelly’s page after a series of posts touting the benefits of hydroxychloroquine as a method of treating COVID-19.
Now, the social media giant has taken further action and permanently removed the MP’s page.
A Facebook spokesperson told Australian state broadcaster ABC that the company doesn’t “allow anyone, including elected officials, to share misinformation about COVID-19 that could lead to imminent physical harm or COVID-19 vaccines that have been debunked by public health experts.”
“We have clear policies against this type of content and have removed Mr. Kelly’s Facebook Page for repeated violations of this policy,” the spokesperson said.
Responding to the ban, Kelly criticized the action as “censorship,” adding that his page was the “most popular, highly used” in the country.
The Hughes, New South Wales MP denied that he was spreading misinformation, but rather sharing a difference of opinion.
“The idea that they are some purveyors of all truth is just absolutely outrageous,” Kelly said.
After his suspension in February, Kelly created a backup page on the platform, which as of yet has not been removed. Kelly also maintains a page on Instagram, another platform controlled by Facebook, although the company treats those accounts as separate entities and no action has been taken against Kelly there.
Speaking to The Guardian Australia, Kelly said that Facebook has refused to explain what they label misinformation, and said that he stands “100 per cent by everything” he’s posted.
“It’s not my random thoughts, it’s backed up by scientific evidence.”
Kelly conceded that many of the doctors and academics he refers to have an opinion that diverges from the mainstream, but stressed that he wants to “live in a democracy where we can hear and debate those opinions.”
The independent MP is currently crafting a private member’s bill to present to the Australian Parliament that would require social media platforms to present written notice before deleting a user’s account, and that could feature fines of up to $100,000 a day for deplatforming individuals for political speech.
Relating his Facebook ban to his new bill, Kelly claimed that a foreign-owned company had restricted him from being able to promote his legislative efforts, describing it as “extinguishing” his ability to use his Facebook page to call for more regulation of the company.’https://www.rebelnews.com/facebook_bans_australian_mp_craig_kelly_for_covid_misinformation
Hey, Joe, ‘The CCP won’t let America’s climate industrial complex interfere with its economic ambitions, key to which is its burgeoning supply of reliable and affordable coal-fired power.
Whereas Australia’s suicidal renewable energy obsession has destroyed this country’s competitive advantage, the only interest China has in wind turbines and solar panels is making them and flogging them off ASAP. If the object was assisting virtue signalling Western nations to wreck once reliable power grids and undermine their energy security, the CCP’s approach is well on the way.
At the other end of the spectrum, a doddery and confused 78-year-old American gent – under direction from the climate carpetbaggers and renewable energy rent seekers – is attempting to bully Australia, among others, into accelerating the process that’s left Australians suffering among the world’s highest retail power prices, with a supply so erratic that energy hungry businesses are on life support and power rationing is the new normal.
Here’s Alan Moran taking a look at how we landed here and where we’re headed, if Australia keep following the path it’s on.
Joe Biden’s bid to enforce climate club
The Australian
Alan Moran
22 April 2021
The urgency of the Biden administration in pursuing green policies signifies the prominence of the issue in terms of world diplomacy and domestic policies in the US, Australia and elsewhere.
Even though the long-planned UN Climate Change Conference will take place later this year in Glasgow, the Biden administration determined that it would call a two-day online conference, scheduled to begin on Thursday US time, addressing the issue of energy, climate change and the actions it deems necessary.
The US administration now proposes to spend $US2.9 trillion ($3.76 trillion) on infrastructure, most of which is climate-related and which is before congress — this is almost as much as total annual revenue and comes on top of a $US2 trillion deficit.
This fusillade of policy measures and diplomatic pressures from the US has magnified enormously the same pressures that have been exerted by the EU. They include threats of trade discrimination — a carbon import tariff — on goods from nations not deemed to be doing sufficient to suppress their emissions.
Such threats even register with China (the emissions of which exceed those of the EU and US combined), which has assured the world that it will achieve “carbon neutrality” by 2060. China’s assurances are somewhat hollow in view of having one million megawatts of coal power capacity (Australia has 25,000MW) with a further 200,000MW planned.
In contrast to fast-growing economies, Australia’s reduction in coal generator capacity has been under way for years. It stems not from a lack of competitiveness on the part of coal but as a result of regulations and direct support that subsidises wind and solar. These subsidies affect the profitability of coal plants by forcing them to run below capacity and operate stop-start. Growing nations in our part of the world — India, China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia — have recognised the road to prosperity is cheap, dependable electricity and all have rapidly expanding coal-generating capacity.
Australia wastefully has spent much more than most other nations on measures targeted at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The ultimate test of this is per capita spending on wind and solar, where Australia has spent twice that of the next highest nations (US and Japan), three times as much as Germany and six times as much as China.
In discriminating against coal (where our domestic resources have no peers in quality and cost) Australian policy amounts to self-harm. It is actuated by a variety of factors. Originally the policies were to give a leg-up to renewables that were seen as potentially cost competitive. The lobbying power of renewable energy interests have augmented this. More recently we see added fear of being ostracised by the Western nations club as a result of the carbon emissions suppression orthodoxy.
Such dynamics strengthen the hand of domestic true believers in cataclysmic global warming. True believers and vested interests happily accept CSIRO fantasies that renewables are now cheaper than coal, while considering renewables subsidies to be essential.
The estimated cost of new actions announced by Scott Morrison this month comes on top of a plethora of support measures for renewables already in place. Such support costs $7bn a year in a wholesale electricity market worth under $12bn and a retail market worth only $30bn. On top of these costs is the $10bn Snowy 2.0 pump storage facility.
The Morrison government has not bought the fable of low-cost wind but, at least in part because of international pressure, it is doubling down on the penalties to coal that the renewable subsidies have brought. This includes the announcement of a further $1bn for the South Australian electricity grid, made unworkable by subsidised renewables, as well as additional support for the impossible economics of carbon capture and storage and hydrogen. The latest measures are icing a cake that government policies have already over-sugared.
For his part, Anthony Albanese has gone the full Sanjeev Gupta, chasing the mirage of green manufacturing. He has foreshadowed even greater subsidies for renewables, despite claiming them to be cheaper than coal, as a foundation for a resurrected manufacturing industry.
As a nation, we continue to sacrifice competitiveness and increased income levels to pursue wokeness. All this said, it has to be recognised that the outcome of a forced reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, if brought about, would have only a trivial effect on the climate. Global temperatures have been increasing for 150 years and it is only in the past 50 years that human emissions could have had any effect. Contrary to assertions, the deleterious effects sometimes mentioned have not taken place: there has been no increase in hurricanes, bushfires or other natural disasters, no rise in the oceans, the ice caps are not melting, polar bear communities are flourishing and, as all Australians will be aware, the dams are full when activists claimed this would never happen again.
We have a mix of genuine fears that mankind is irretrievably changing the world’s climate that no amount of evidence that this is not presenting serious threats will calm. We have businesses seeking to take advantage of this by seeking subsidies. And we have politics seeking to chisel out a prime role for itself in harnessing the world economy. These factors are a potent brew with drastic implications for a prosperous Australia. They also have wide-ranging geopolitical implications given the seemingly unstoppable growth of an aggressive China that, irrespective of its pledges, will not allow its wealth to be curtailed by adopting high-cost forms of energy.’https://stopthesethings.com/2021/04/26/last-man-standing-china-defies-bidens-climate-crusade-against-coal-fired-power/
