"It’s very clear now that it costs a lot, and I don’t think the Australian people would take that deal if it was offered with the actual facts on the table.” - Jude Blik
Jude Blik, an engineer and policy researcher at the Centre for Independent Studies, delivered a sobering address exposing the myths underpinning Australia’s headlong rush to net zero.
Drawing on his background in risk management and energy economics, Blik warned that the public is being sold a narrative built on “emotionally potent oversimplifications” rather than evidence-based facts.
At the heart of the deception is the claim that climate change is an “existential crisis.”
According to Blik, this framing has generated an “at any cost mindset” where no price is considered too high, as evidenced by Chris Bowen’s predictions this week of immanent climate catastrophe.
Worse still, Australians are told not only that the costs are justified but that “there’s no cost. We can do this for free. We can actually get rich doing it. We can become a superpower.” This, he said, is “worse than a lie.”
Blik dismantled the “Jenga blocks” that prop up both the diagnosis and the cure.
On the problem side, we are told: human emissions are evil, climate change is irreversible, and humans can stop it if only they act urgently.
But as Blik pointed out, “every single thing here… the chairs you’re sitting on, the building materials, the clothes you’re wearing, they’re touched by fossil fuels in some way. And that is a good thing insofar as it has underpinned human welfare and prosperity for the past 100 years.”
High-energy societies, he noted, are always “prosperous, long living societies.”
Blik also challenged the claim of imminent catastrophe.
Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s reports, he said, are “mixed” on outcomes like crop yields, and the data shows “tropical cyclones… have not increased in frequency.”
He highlighted a recent U.S. Department of Energy report that recognises climate change is real but insists “it’s not the greatest threat facing humanity” and that climate models “tend to run hot and offer little guidance.”
This undermines the idea of an inevitable apocalypse demanding radical sacrifice.
Turning to the “solution” side, Blik stressed that Australia’s emissions are globally insignificant: “If Australia dropped off the map overnight it would not impact the climate.” Yet ordinary families are asked to shoulder crushing costs.
One of the biggest lies, he argued, is that “wind and solar are the cheapest form of power.”
He pointed to real-world data: every country with high renewable penetration also has high electricity prices. The reality is that “a renewables-based system is several times bigger in terms of capital expenditure” than a coal or nuclear system, which “is what sends you the bill.”
Blik also exposed flaws in government modelling.
The CSIRO’s GenCost report and AEMO’s Integrated System Plan, he said, are “cherrypicking the data” and even at their most optimistic admit power costs four times higher than historical coal prices.
Moreover, “every single scenario” they model is constrained to assume 82% renewables by 2030—so it is false to claim renewables “came out cheapest” when other scenarios were never tested.
Finally, Blik warned against the lie that “your standard of living won’t suffer.”
Already, Australia has fallen from one of the cheapest electricity nations to among the most expensive.
“Cheap electricity underpins so much of our economy,” he said.
“If you raise the cost of energy as a base input, you raise the cost of everything else.”
Transmission build-outs, land seizures from farmers, and ballooning subsidies will only add to the burden.
Blik concluded with a sober truth: “It was never put to the Australian people that this was gonna cost. We were always told we can save the world and we can do it for free. In fact, we can get rich doing it. It’s very clear now that it costs a lot, and I don’t think the Australian people would take that deal if it was offered with the actual facts on the table.”