‘Oh dear. Do lithium batteries pose a fire hazard? Yes they do. And suddenly it seems to be mainstream. The story we discussed in April became the focus of a major NBC item on June 20, including the suburban Houston fire chief whose department used a month’s worth of water putting it out comparing such fires to “a trick birthday candle.” And the Guardian just wrote an exposé on the environmental cost of lithium mining. Which of course has all been said before. But what’s actually encouraging is who’s saying it now: People who believe in man-made global warming, and alternative energy, are finally starting to engage in a balanced discussion of pros and cons. Mind you, in the era of the Internet it’s pretty hard to hush up the tendency of lithium batteries to cause horrendous fires. But if you’re waiting for our scathing putdown, well, not in this item. Proper attention to such things can only advance the discussion.
OK, one small putdown. NBC seems to regard the whole thing as a hiccup, to be overcome by one of progressives’ favourite techniques, training. “As the popularity of electric vehicles grows, firefighters nationwide are realizing that they are not fully equipped to deal with them. So they have been banding together, largely informally, to share information… But training to put out these fires can’t come fast enough as more electric vehicles arrive on U.S. roads every day. According to IHS Insight, an industry analysis firm, the number of registered electric vehicles reached a record market share in the United States of 1.8 percent and is forecast to double to 3.5 percent by the end of this year. But IHS notes that 1 in 10 cars are expected to be electric by 2025.”
Frankly we’ll believe that one when we see it. Partly because for all the chirpy enthusiasm about how EVs are on the verge of a technological and economic breakthrough, or several of them, again, batteries are as suspicious as an energy source as they are as a fire source. And a source of materials hard to dispose of. But again, the important point is that discussion of these issues is no longer taboo. Indeed the New York Times just dipped a toe into these calm, sensible waters with an item on how there isn’t enough lithium to meet President Biden’s EV goals and, what’s more, “production of raw materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel that are essential to these technologies are often ruinous to land, water, wildlife and people”. Now the Times also opines that “That environmental toll has often been overlooked in part because there is a race underway among the United States, China, Europe and other major powers.” But we think it would also be fair to say that it has been overlooked in part because climate alarmists, including those at the Times, have not wanted people to think there’s a downside to ditching fossil fuels.
This Climate Scam will destroy the economy, electricity grid and increase taxes for those living in the Western world. Our “leaders” have swallowed the climate kool aid! Here is the climate scam strategy of the make believe conservative New South Wales state government’s proposed budget to save the earth through electric cars.
The following story is going to be true for nations that worship at the altar of Climate Change!
‘An NBC story headlined “California warned to brace for another summer of energy blackouts” to which the head of the state’s power grid operator added “Guarded optimism is a reasonable way to state it.” Another way might be: Why is it that the richest state in the union can’t provide its people with reliable electricity? Dare we suggest because it’s also the greenest? But that possibility isn’t stopping the lineup of would-be copycats. For instance President Biden with his pledge to cut US GHG emissions by half from 2005 levels by 2030, that famously distant date now under nine years away. As Somini Sengupta put it with considerable understatement in the New York Times’ “Climate Fwd.” after Biden’s virtual climate summit, “Now comes the hard part.” Unfortunately, causing soaring energy prices while missing climate targets doesn’t seem hard at all to the political class.
As for the possibility that unwise investments in unicorn power are to blame for blackouts, perish the thought “’Achieving 100 percent clean electricity by 2045 is not only a bold pursuit, but a wise one,’ Marybel Batjer, president of the California Public Utility Commission, said in a statement. ‘Such action is required to avoid the worst impacts and costs of climate change and to ensure the delivery of safe, affordable, reliable and clean power to all Californians.’” Uh didn’t you just say it was going off? Yes but see “as the most populous state races toward a sustainable future, officials remain concerned that California’s aging infrastructure is not up to the task.”
Nor is their mental infrastructure, at least according to Francis Menton who argues that they didn’t grasp the difference between GW and GWH. Also known as “Either these people do not understand the basic units used for these calculations, or they cannot do basic arithmetic, or both.” We’re going with both.
As we are with regard to the Canadian government, which of course maintains a sunny insistence that it will meet all its targets despite never having done so yet. But as Lorrie Goldstein recently wrote in the Toronto Sun, such “political rhetoric has become increasingly divorced from reality.” He quoted Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson that “We will see year-on-year reductions — absolute reductions — starting in 2020, through to 2030. We have high confidence that’s actually going to be the case.” But Goldstein says, we may see a reduction in 2020 because of the pandemic, when they lope around to releasing the figures in 2022 (though probably not, his paper editorialized, by enough to meet even that year’s target). But “Since the Trudeau government was elected in 2015, Canada’s emissions have gone up from 723 million tonnes annually to 730 million tonnes in 2019 — the last year for which government data is available. Now it’s promising to cut our annual emissions by 40% to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030 — meaning a cut of between 287 million tonnes and 324 million tonnes annually. A 324-million tonne cut would require Canada to shut down the equivalent of our entire oil and gas sector (191 million tonnes annually ), entire agriculture sector (73 million tonnes annually) and entire electricity sector (61 million tonnes annually) in less than a decade. That would total 325-million tonnes, giving Wilkinson one million tonnes to spare. That’s some fairy dust he must have.”
Across the pond the British government is tossing more than £30 million at research into ways to get large amounts of CO2 out of the atmosphere. And maybe they’ll get lucky though, as we have already observed, this plan is more than a little risky if it turns out CO2 really drives the temperature, because then sucking it back to a “natural” 280 ppm would not only risk making the world colder as well as browner in the short run, but triggering a trend taking us back to the Little Ice Age with its foul weather and crop failures. On the plus side, this initiative shows that they are serious. Though back on the minus, they’re a bit late. What ever happened to figuring out how to do something before promising to do it?
Make-believe remains popular. But nuclear is the real main option, and the hostility of many greens to the one form of power than can reliably supply energy to normal people without a lot of GHGs has raised suspicions in some quarters about their real goals. But taking the high road, we ask that as the other options come up short, they reconsider. Because other options are coming up short. Way short.’https://climatediscussionnexus.com/2021/06/02/more-money-than-brains/
‘In this Climate Discussion Nexus “Backgrounder”, Dr. John Robson offers a constructive alternative to the infuriating tendency to label people and consign them to pigeonholes such as “denier” when the climate “mainstream” is actually broad and complex with plenty of room for skepticism about the supposed crisis.’
It isn’t a surprise that Bill Nye believes in the Climate scam. However, what does Bill think of those dim wits that do not? ‘The only definitive way to see significant action to prevent climate change is to simply wait for deniers and contrarians to “age out,” according to Nye.
Yep, that’s right! if you deny what these climate scammers are pushing and you aren’t dead then you should be.
I know Bill will not read this blog or the following verse but he should. Genesis 8:22 While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. This was a promise from the Creator Himself after the most dramatic change of climate in history, the world-wide flood!
I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains. I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea, Her beauty and her terror – The wide brown land for me!
‘If you recall, last year around this time, the lead story was “global warming set Australia on fire”.
Last year we experienced one of the worst bushfire seasons in recorded history; the devastation was genuinely shocking. But like any natural disaster, climate change activists refused to let this grand opportunity pass without capitalising on it.
Don’t get me wrong; I don’t deny climate change exists.
Of course, the climate changes; it’s been doing that forever. Take the old testament, for example; there’s evidence of the “climate-changing” throughout it, from the extreme floods in Genisis to the severe droughts in the book of the Prophets.
My issue is the narrative that man-induced global warming caused last years bushfires without any actual scientific evidence, just a lot of theory.
But even more dishonest than that, neglecting the critical facts, namely:
The fact that we were experiencing a natural phenomenon known as the Indian Ocean Dipole, which, if you remember, none of the climate change protesters I spoke to at the time even knew what it was.
In addition to the natural phenomenon, we also had extreme fuel loads on the ground, which resulted from Green policies restricting the amount of prescribed burning and fire breaks allowed.
The truth is, in Australia, we have always experienced intense bushfires, drought and flooding. We always will. Reducing carbon emissions may help; it definitely won’t stop the fires, droughts or floods.
The only thing scientifically proven is that managing the fuel load will stop bushfires from spreading so far and wide.
For example, take this year, no natural phenomenon plus all the fuel on the ground burnt away last year, and what do you know, a bushfire season that the media doesn’t want to discuss.
Biden and his political mates around the world are simply following the bidding of the CCP. That’s one reason why they had to get rid of President Trump! This crazy Net Zero 2050 is their target to ruin the West and make us all slaves to the CCP. Conspiracy theory? NOT!! However, as a Bible believing Christian my hope isn’t in politicians but in the Lord Jesus Christ! Titus 2:13 Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.
I am surprised You Tube has not removed this video by now.
‘The Ominous Outlook for 2050
Narrator
There are two different visions out there of what the world ought to look like in 2050. One of them is called Net Zero, which says that within three decades the world must all but eliminate fossil fuel use, and get carbon dioxide emissions down to zero, net of the amount plants and trees absorb. So many politicians, business leaders, bankers and academics around the world are calling for Net Zero that you might think it’s solidly based on science.
John Robson
But it’s not. Many experts dispute the necessity of this 2050 plan and indeed its feasibility. They say the worst case scenario for the impacts of climate change over the coming 30 years won’t be nearly as costly as the impact of getting rid of fossil fuels. They say trying to get to net zero in such a short time could destroy our prosperity and weaken us internationally. And they say we couldn’t get there even if we tried.
Narrator
Despite these objections, and with virtually no public debate, governments throughout the western world are embracing the goal of net zero by 2050 and are preparing to impose the target, regardless of the costs. They’re not interested in the vision of cautious, evidence-based, adaptation to what the future brings.
John Robson
Which funnily enough isn’t even the other vision I want to talk about. You see, there’s yet another, very different idea of what the world should look like in 2050 that you may not have heard of. It’s not exactly a secret, but Western governments and journalists ignore it just as they ignore skepticism about Net Zero.
Narrator
This other vision is called The Hundred Year Marathon. And it’s like a mirror image of Net Zero, because it’s the Chinese Politburo’s elaborate and ambitious scheme to build up their nation’s economy and its global power so that by 2049, the hundredth anniversary of Mao Zedong’s seizure of power, China will be the world’s dominant superpower.
John Robson
Then, starting in 2050, the ideology that guides the Chinese Communist Party will spread around the globe, achieving what they like to call “harmony” though a better name would be “world domination”.
Narrator
You might be tempted to dismiss this warning as paranoia, some kind of warmed-over “Red scare”. But while Chinese leaders are careful not to say much to the rest of the world, they talk openly about this ambition among themselves. The plans are found in high-level speeches and strategy documents, and the implementation is progressing around the world, step-by-step, right in plain sight, including the so-called “Belt and Road Initiative” and the not-so-green investment in coal plants in many Third World nations as well as at home. But most Westerners still know nothing about it and find it hard to believe such a plan could even exist, let alone succeed.
John Robson
Unfortunately, the truth is that these two apparently disconnected visions of 2050 are two sides of the same coin. They both lead us to the same place, with the west hobbled and weak, and China powerful and dominant. And if our governments don’t know it, don’t want to hear about it, the Chinese government certainly does. I’m John Robson and this is a Climate Discussion Nexus Backgrounder on the Ominous Outlook for 2050.
First of all, let me assure you I’m not saying “climate change” is a communist plot. Or a globalist plot. Or a what have you plot. Climate change alarmism isn’t not a plot at all, even if it is mistaken. The whole discussion of carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect arose in Europe in the 1800s out of scientific inquiry, and lots of people believe in it sincerely, and it’s appropriate and necessary that we, in free societies, have a lively legitimate debate about its meaning and importance. Including the necessity and practicality of Net Zero.
Narrator
But we also need to have a discussion about the geopolitical implications of the green agenda, and the illegitimate uses to which it can be put. Including the strange coincidence that a global political movement has arisen that uses the threat of climate change to impose an agenda on the Western world that fits neatly with what The Hundred Year Marathon seeks to do. If it is a coincidence.
John Robson
You’ll notice, the endless chatter about “Net Zero” never seems to include China. They’re building hundreds of coal-fired power plants at home and abroad, buying up oil reserves around the world, including here in Canada, and they’re ramping up their economy as fast as humanly possible without regard for the human cost including due to real pollution as well as the “carbon” kind. And they have politely but firmly told the world to go jump in the South China Sea whenever discussion of global climate policy comes up. Except not always politely.
Sure they like to brag about the occasional solar panel they put up, or their internal carbon trading shell game, and last fall President Xi Jinping made noises to the UN about cutting emissions. That kind of talk always wins them praise from credulous western environmentalists. But the reality is, net zero is a western preoccupation and China isn’t part of it.
When I say “China” I don’t mean the geographical entity, of course. Nor do I mean the people who live there. It’s standard shorthand for a political organization called the Chinese Communist Party or CCP that rules China and its people in a thoroughly undemocratic, brutal manner.
Narrator
The CCP was formed in 1921, and after decades of military insurgency it won control of China in 1949 under the leadership of Mao Zedong. It is an authoritarian communist movement that aspires to be totalitarian and control all aspects of the lives of the Chinese people including their thinking. It now has about 90 million members, but not because it’s popular. Because you pretty much have to be a Party member to have a significant job in Chinese business or government. Until the Party turns on you, that is. And then there’s nowhere to hide, no matter how important, rich or well-connected you seemed to be. There’s no such thing as free speech in China, or separation of powers, or rule of law, or private property, or security of any kind. Westerners by and large have no idea how powerful the CCP is.
John Robson
For instance, China does not have a military the way normal countries do. Instead the so-called “Peoples’ Liberation Army” is the military wing of the Chinese Communist Party. Imagine the hoo-hah if Donald Trump had proposed having the US Army swear an oath of loyalty to the Republican Party instead of the US Constitution. But that’s what the CCP has done, and it now has the largest military in the world as its private enforcers.
China also does not have an independent court system, of course. Judges in China are CCP officials whose sole loyalty is to the Party if they know what’s good for them. The CCP controls the school system, the media, the universities, the internet, all local municipal governments, and of course the central government in Beijing. Leaders in any of those systems have to swear loyalty to the CCP and its ideology to hold their positions. What’s more, all Chinese companies are effectively branches of the state including under the National Intelligence Law that makes enterprises like, say Huawei, explicitly tentacles of Beijing’s espionage.
Narrator
It’s not accidental and it’s not because of any external threat and there is no intention of reforming it. China made a show of moving towards democracy in the 1990s, just long enough to win a membership in the World Trade Organization in 2001. But what was really going on internally was a purge of reformers in the wake of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
John Robson
By the time Xi Jinping took power in 2012 the hardliners had cemented their control. And in 2013 Chairman Xi delivered a confidential speech called Document Number 9, which outlines the seven “false ideologies” that the CCP must repress at all costs: Western-style constitutional democracy, the belief in ‘universal values’, civil society (or individual rights), free market economics, independent journalism, ‘historical nihilism’ (i.e. questioning Maoist doctrine), and anything that undermines the socialist nature of China.
Narrator
In that speech he also referred to “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”. According to China expert Michael Pillsbury, this is code for righting the historical wrongs that have prevented China from reaching its destiny of being the dominant nation in the world. They don’t simply want to be successful, to be secure, to be an equal and respected partner in a multipolar world. They believe in the saying attributed to Confucius that “there can only be one sun up in the sky.” There can only be one dominant superpower.
John Robson
According to this chauvinistic, belligerent and frankly rather weird reading of history, China was destined to fill that role until its humiliation by the aggressive west in the 1800s. But by 2049 they will have righted that wrong and completed their rejuvenation. Or died trying. Along with anyone who gets in their way.
Delusions of grandeur, you might say. As we said of the Soviet Union and before that Hitler. Yes, I’m putting on that annoying historian’s mortar-board again and saying we’ve been there, we’ve done that and, you’d think, got the point. Instead while we’ve spent decades praising the CCP’s quest for social justice, building statues of Norman Bethune and praising Pierre Trudeau’s youthful visit to China, and indeed taking pity on China as a poor, weak developing nation to whom believe it or not Canada still sends foreign aid, they’ve become the world’s top producer and user of energy, steel, cement and chemical fertilizer (like Khrushchev’s U.S.S.R. before them with similar ambitions). They own over a trillion dollars’ worth of US government debt, they control over 90 percent of the world’s supply of rare earth minerals which gives them effective control over global electronics production, they took over the mobile phone infrastructure in Africa and are seeking dominance over the new 5G global communications network, and through that Belt-and-Road Initiative they have been acquiring vast amounts of transportation infrastructure around the world.
Narrator
The reach of the CCP is astonishing. They own Pirelli tires, Syngenta chemicals, 40 percent of the Philippines’ national electricity system, and ports in Rotterdam, Antwerp, Greece, Bilbao, Valencia, Panama, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nicaragua and elsewhere. In Canada they own Nexen Inc., one of Canada’s major oil and gas companies. And the Canadian government still hasn’t formally barred Huawei from the 5G network’s key infrastructure, the only one of the “Five Eyes” still determined to see no evil here.
John Robson
And bear in mind, we’re not talking about individual Chinese investors buying assets. These are Chinese state-owned, state dominated enterprises, all under the control of the CCP. No Chinese firm is independent of the Politburo no matter what the share certificates or formal laws say. What Chairman Xi wants, Chairman Xi takes, with the People’s Liberation Army to back him up.
Well, it’s not to stop climate change, that’s for sure. Throughout this drive for world domination in the name of communist dictatorship, which following Confucius’ policy of the “rectification of names” is exactly what it should be called, their use of fossil fuels, especially coal and oil, have soared, making them the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases by a very wide margin that grows wider every day.
Narrator
Which brings us back to the climate issue. Because a strange thing about Net Zero is that it was never really discussed anywhere, or voted on. It just one day seemed to become the policy of every government, everywhere. Except China, which is applauding us for it while moving relentlessly the other way.
Net Zero has even recently and rather suddenly been embraced by the global financial system. Groups like the World Bank and major private banks have all announced they won’t lend any more money to big fossil fuel-based energy projects, even in developing countries, including coal-fired power plants. Whereas China will.
And as numerous authors have documented, top leaders in the global finance sphere have been the targets for decades of careful, sophisticated influence campaigns run out of Beijing.
John Robson
Hold on a minute, I know what you’re about to say: this is all conspiracy-mongering, which you told us not to do. Besides surely it’s just a coincidence. But we already know that Russia operates this way, funding European green groups who have all but shut down energy development in the EU, forcing them to be utterly dependent on Russian gas exports. It stands to reason that China would use the same strategy. It’s not a conspiracy, they talk about it among themselves. And these days China’s resources vastly exceed those of Russia which, for all Putin’s thuggish delusions of grandeur, has been described with some justice as “a gas station for China.”
So how does this work? Well, as Toronto-based researcher Patricia Adams has documented, western green groups have been conspicuous in their fondness for the ruthless Chinese government. While everyone else has been growing increasingly alarmed at the proliferation of concentration camps, slave labour factories, crushing free speech including in Hong Kong and all the other hallmarks of totalitarian repression under the CCP, even genocide of the Uighur Muslims, environmental groups are conspicuously glowing about the Chinese leadership. As Adams says:
Narrator
The big exceptions – those who have yet to have their eyes opened to the dangers posed by the CCP – are Western environmentalists and their funders. Rather than becoming cautious about China’s role in the world, these groups lavish it with praise for its environmental efforts
John Robson
So do you think it’s just coincidence that, as Adams notes, some $330 million worth of funding for North American green groups can be traced to one single source, Energy Foundation China, which is managed by Ji Zou, a long-time senior official in the Chinese government?
Narrator
Zou, as a paymaster for the Western environmentalists, decides what projects to fund, enabling him to effectively solicit work desired by his former employers in Beijing from the Western environmental organizations, who give it their imprimatur of legitimacy.
Still, let’s keep the rose-coloured blinders on and say it’s all just a coincidence. It’s still remarkable, and worrisome, how it all happens to work to the CCP’s advantage. Where does the Net Zero doctrine leave developing countries who need to build up their electricity grids? China is now the only place most of them can look to for funding. And it’s a role China has enthusiastically embraced, since the terms they impose on the recipients lock in their control over those governments for decades to come.
So even if the CCP didn’t plan it, they couldn’t have arranged it any better. And nor could the people Lenin famously called “useful idiots” in the free world. Which apparently includes the entire EU leadership, which has decided not to criticize China’s dismal human rights record, intellectual property theft or geopolitical bullying lest it impede the flow of meaningless rhetoric on climate. And these coincidences keep appearing in other places too.
Narrator
Consider BlackRock Inc, the world’s largest financial firm with $6.5 trillion in assets under management. In 2019 its President, Larry Fink, announced a plan to ensure the company’s future growth by aggressively expanding in China. To do this he recruited a team of talented financial executives, headed by Tang Xiaodong, a banker and former Chinese government official, to lead BlackRock’s Chinese operations. And right on schedule, Fink just announced they’re going to use their massive financial clout to force companies they own to commit to net zero by 2050, or face being cut off from financing.
John Robson
Will BlackRock apply this rule to CCP-controlled enterprises, or the entire Chinese economy for that matter? Dream on. Once again, it’s only western companies that will be strangled and tossed in a ditch, after being plundered of their proprietary technology, while BlackRock and the CCP cash in on unrestrained growth in China driven by fossil fuels.
In other countries though, there is a conspicuous connection between governments being overly friendly with China and imposing Net Zero on themselves. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his former Ambassador to China John McCallum have been positively giddy over the regime in Beijing, although McCallum did eventually have to be fired when his handling of a diplomatic row with China caused the Canadian press to wonder aloud where his loyalties lay because he was giving the Chinese advice on how to defeat the Canadian government, in public. Meanwhile Trudeau has, of course, announced that Canada is committing to Net Zero by 2050, notwithstanding the fact that it will wipe out our oil and gas sector and may split our country, while China is allowed to grow theirs without limit or reproach.
Narrator
In the UK, where Net Zero is now gospel, connections between the CCP and the social elite are particularly deep. The 48 Group Club is a Who’s Who of top UK government, banking, university and industry elite who regularly rub shoulders with a select group of high-ranking current and former Chinese officials, ostensibly for the purpose of developing trade relationships and business deals. But as Hamilton and Ohlberg detail in Hidden Hand, the 48 Group Club has really become an organ for the Chinese government to influence British public opinion and politics through their uncritical repetition of CCP propaganda.
In a scathing conclusion, Hamilton and Ohlberg write:
In our judgment, so entrenched are the CCP’s influence networks among British elites that Britain has passed the point of no return, and any attempt to extricate itself from Beijing’s orbit would probably fail.
John Robson
Well, I say try anyway. Especially if it’s all just a coincidence and those nice Chinese government agents are plying westerners with money and flattery, and sometimes other favours as well, out of the stunning benevolence of their hearts. But before accepting that preposterous assertion, or trying to hand me a tin foil hat, ask yourself this question: Suppose the CCP really did hatch the scheme of using its global influence networks to push Net Zero by 2050 on the rest of us as an integral part of its Hundred Year Marathon strategy. How would the outcome look any different from what’s been happening?
If the answer is that it wouldn’t, it’s either a plot or it’s a plan that’s getting a lot of venal, ideological or simply careless support from our side. Remember, Lenin didn’t say that the useful idiots were cynics, but he did say they were fools.
Narrator
Whatever the cause, the world is traveling on two paths towards 2050. And while they seem unrelated, with one all about saving the planet from supposed climate doom and the other a dark totalitarian ambition to rule the world, they converge in a remarkable spot where the West is hobbled economically, politically and militarily by climate alarmism and its misguided schemes to slash energy abundance and squash economic growth, while China’s communist regime secures unchallenged global economic, military and ideological dominance.
John Robson
The two visions are stereoscopic. Even if you close one eye, or the other, you see the same picture. But I want nothing to do it. I say it’s time to open our eyes wide and see what’s in front of us, surprisingly close, big and ominous.
For the Climate Discussion Nexus, I’m John Robson. I was an anti-communist before it was cool, I was an anti-communist while it was cool, I’m still an anti-communist when it’s not cool anymore, and you should be too.’https://climatediscussionnexus.com/videos/the-red-green-menace/
My wife and I didn’t watch or listen to the Fake President’s speech to Congress and perhaps you didn’t either. So, in case you wish to know a little of what the Fake President had to say I am sharing Mark Levin’s take on it. Enjoy!
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/
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