Chris Bowen won’t embrace nuclear energy and now wants Australia to stop using and exporting fossil fuels.
He has an economic death wish for Australia.
This will slit the throat of the goose that lays Australia’s golden eggs – the $100 billion plus export coal industry.
Speaking at the COP 28 “climate crisis” conference in Dubai, Bowen went on a flight of fancy.
“We don’t need to phase out fossil fuel emissions, we need to end the use of fossil fuels.”
He didn’t say what Australia would replace the lost billions of dollars with or how poor people in India, China or Africa would get electricity.
Nor did he say how Australians in the suburbs were supposed to afford their electricity, the cost of which has gone through the roof since both sides of politics committed to net zero policies with no viable base-load power.
Bowen was more concerned about rising sea levels in the Pacific, despite the fact that most coral atolls are growing, not sinking.
The Australian reported that Bowen said he “wasn’t going to see our Pacific brothers and sisters inundated and their countries swallowed by the seas”, vowing to back the COP president “with every ounce of energy we have’’ to keep 1.5 degrees as the “North Star.”
He went on to say: “Fossils fuels don’t have a future in our energy system” and “fossil fuels has no ongoing role to play in our energy systems”.
He seemed oblivious to the fact that India and China are not about to stop buying coal anytime soon and if Australia won’t sell it, they will buy it elsewhere.
As someone who has rejected nuclear energy, Bowen didn’t say how countries like Australia were supposed to keep the lights on when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.
He didn’t explain how he was going to build 22,000 solar panel per day and 40 giant wind turbines per month and resume enough land to connect them all with transition lines to meet his 2030 target.
Sadly the Opposition is also committed to net zero, it is just not as cavalier about it as Bowen.
Shadow energy minister Ted O’Brien responded to Bowen’s shock statement in Dubai.
“What is the plan, how much will it cost and who is paying?,’’ Mr O’Brien said in an interview with The Australian.
“Unless Mr Bowen can explain his plan to replace oil which constitutes over 30 per cent of our primary energy use, then what on earth is he doing? If Labor plans to stop Australians from manufacturing fertilisers, petrochemicals, steel and cement, it must come clean and tell the workers when their jobs end, and consumers how much prices are going to rise.’’
Politicians from both sides have already hurt Australians by beginning the phase out of coal-fired power stations with not affordable and reliable alternatives in place.
Bowen’s latest upping of the climate zealotry ante is irresponsible and will only bring more economic pain to Australians struggling with a cost-of-living crisis created in large part because of the bi-partisan support for ill-thought out net zero policies.