It’s over. Liberal and Labor in Australia must catch up.
Energy policy driven by climate catastrophism is being pushed off the table for the first time in 20 years.
In the US net zero is seen as a “sinister” anti-human agenda that is “unachievable”.
This was the blunt message this week in London from the Trump Administration’s new Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
Interviewed by Australian journalist Chis Uhlmann via video-link from Washington DC for the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference, Wright said the pursuit of net zero by western nations had delivered no benefits, just rocketing costs.
“This is not energy transition. This is lunacy. This is impoverishing your own citizens in a delusion that this is somehow going to make the world a better place,” Wright said.
Someone should tell Anthony Albanese, Chris Bowen, Peter Dutton and Adam Bandt who are all heading into the up-coming Australian election on a unity ticket backing net zero and Paris.
Even ARC co-founder, former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson, released a podcast from London this week where he declared Paris was dead.
“The blunt reality we now face is that the biggest emitters China, India, Indonesia – an emerging economy - and America, with the re-election of Trump, have effectively ended Paris.
“To all intents and purposes, as I see it, it's now meaningless.”
Speaking to the 4000 ARC delegates last night, Write said:
“Net zero 2050 is a sinister goal. It's both unachievable by impractical means, but the aggressive pursuit of it, and you're sitting in a country (the UK) that has aggressively pursued this goal, has not delivered any benefits, but it's delivered tremendous costs.
“If you make energy more expensive and less reliable, as the United Kingdom has done over the last couple decades, you lower the standard of living of your population, shrink their opportunity set, and you simply export your industry.
“No one's going to make an energy intensive product in the United Kingdom anymore. It's just been displaced somewhere else, where it's going to be made in a coal powered factory in China, loaded on a diesel powered ship to get down the river on a bigger diesel powered ship to be unloaded at the docks in London.”
Uhlmann then probed Wright on the key claim of the climate lobby regarding the supposed intensity of natural disasters.
“So what would you say to the Europeans and your colleagues in the United Kingdom and those in Australia who say that what you're doing and the path that you're putting the world on will destroy it?”
“Look at the data,” Wright shot back.
“You know, we're, we're scaring Children all the time about stories with extreme weather and extreme weather is terrifying.
“Deaths from extreme weather have plummeted for 100 years. They're continuing to decline and the majority of the remaining deaths are in low income, poorly energised countries because they can't have the robustness to survive whatever the natural world brings at us.
“The focus on (net zero) has been just a colossal failure. Trillions of dollars of investment, most of it at wind, solar, batteries, and expanding transmission, delivered less than three per cent of global energy last year - less than three percent and everywhere it had meaningful penetration it made electricity more expensive and less reliable.
“Germany itself has spent a half a trillion dollars in attempt to revolutionise or change their energy system. They went from 80 per cent of their primary energy from hydrocarbons to 74 per cent.
“They didn't switch away from hydrocarbons. They just invested in a whole new energy system, added tremendously to costs. They doubled, more than doubled the capacity of their electrical grid and delivered 20 per cent less electricity at two to three times the cost. This is a proud, great industrial nation in Germany.”
Sadly, this is the trajectory Australia is on under Liberal and Labor net zero policies in compliance with the Paris Accords.
Wright also made the social justice case for a pro-human energy abundance policy.
“More than half of the globe's citizens are walking around in hand washed clothes. They dream about a day where they can have the labour-saving benefits of appliances, of a washing machine.
“So we're going to get out of the way on those things. And we are going to focus efforts on how we can stir growth of energy production across the board of affordable, reliable, secure energy, but maybe the biggest focus on nuclear and energy-dense, reliable technology that's just been stifled.”
Family First agrees.
With John Anderson now conceding Paris is dead and the US pursuing a policy under Trump and Wright of energy abundance, hopefully Albanese, Bowen and Dutton will see the light.
In the meantime, Vote 1 Family First.