Post by douglavers on Nov 26, 2017 22:15:47 GMT
Article by Terry McCrann.
[[Josh Frydenberg’s climate unicorn dead before it even exists
The Australian12:00AM November 25, 2017
TERRY MCCRANN
Business ColumnistMelbourne
I really, really, want to believe in and promote Josh Frydenberg’s Brave New Energy World. But I just can’t get over the initial hurdle that it’s a complete crock, delivered by a blessing of unicorns.
More simply, it’s going to be “dead, buried and cremated” before it even exists. It has a lifespan — if, indeed, something that doesn’t actually exist can have a lifespan — exactly equal to that of the remaining days of Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership. That is to say, they will both be consigned to the dustbin of history at the same time.
Actually, make that a threesome. Both Frydenberg’s tenure of the energy portfolio — and its co-joined environment one — along with his broader political career will go into that bin at the same time.
Possibly, with all three going before Christmas or very shortly thereafter when the government loses the Bennelong by-election and its majority.
A former federal coalition minister — who’s loss to parliament and good government has very decidedly proved his own personal gain — made a very cogent point to me during the week. And no, it wasn’t Peter Costello.
The Chinese vote is the critical vote in Bennelong. The Chinese are not happy with the current government. At the macro level they are not happy with its “tough China” policy. At the micro level, they are not happy with its curbs on Chinese investment in property.
If John Alexander loses the “China vote” he loses Bennelong. And that would be the case against a generic Labor candidate. He is not facing a generic candidate but one who is both very (politically) attractive and has a big public brand — which we saw in a recent US presidential election is the single biggest plus a political candidate can have.
The inevitable approaching political demise of Frydenberg is something of a minor tragedy in all this. He is — or rather, brutally, was — the outstanding member of that next Liberal generation. More specifically, he best combined the two streams of the Liberal tradition, so critical to both political and even more policy success: the conservative and the small-l liberal.
Like all such tragedies it was ultimately self-created. Frydenberg made his terminal decision just over a year ago, the day after the US presidential election, when he chose to handcuff himself to Turnbull politically and to the Fake Paris Climate Accord in policy terms.
Donald Trump’s victory had given Australia both an “out” from the Paris Accord and, indeed, imposed an imperative on us to seize it. What was inherently stupid and against both the national interest and the individual interests of every single Australian (even if most are themselves too stupid to appreciate that) became after President Trump not only stupid but almost literally insane.
Yet Prime Minister Turnbull, in a Kevin-Rudd like exercise of globally focused utterly fatuous moral posturing, chose to deliberately and publicly double down on the Fake Accord — we might not have electricity or a functioning economy, but I am determined that we’ll “always have Paris” — and, in the privacy of his own fantasies, aimed to instruct the new President on the errors of his ways.
Frydenberg had a very simple binary choice: to reject the dead-end stupidity or to stand with it and Turnbull.
And interestingly, by the
bye, also with foreign minister and our now temporary deputy PM Julie Bishop, who seems to pop up, Woody Allen Zelig-style.
Frydenberg’s choice then unfolded inexorably and so excruciatingly over the 12 months to today’s embarrassing denouement, in the enveloping twilight of his and the PM’s now co-joined political careers.
The so-called NEG or National Energy Guarantee is dammed upfront by the total irreconcilability of its three aims: to ensure both affordable and reliable electricity (and, indirectly, gas) and meeting our commitments under the Fake Paris Accord to cut emissions of carbon dioxide by 26-28 per cent by 2030.
This, not exactly incidentally, means we have to cut emissions per capita by closer to an economy-killing and individual-impoverishing 50 per cent, and do so, in barely a dozen years, thanks to our crazy-stupid “build another Canberra ever year” high immigration, for want of a better word, policy.
Unless and until you repeal the basic laws of physics, you are not going to get cheaper and even more impossibly reliable energy than that provided by fossil fuels or nuclear fission.
All attempts to “make” so-called renewable energy “work” by including batteries or pumping stuff uphill is essentially like embarking on designing a square wheel just because, just because, the round one is so, well, demode. Hell, the round one’s been around almost since man discovered fossil fuels.
The modelling Frydenberg has so desperately, embarrassingly, presented in support of his NEG is like all the — Fake — modelling we have seen to tell us we really, truly, can have our climate unicorn and get to eat its delicious meat at the same time.
The all-critical three words that damn the supposed conclusion that we will get cheaper power at the end of it all are these: compared to “business as usual”.
Frankly Josh, if you can allow me to provide a variation of the overused Titanic metaphor; that yes the present policy mess and energy investment inertia is the equivalent of the historical record: the Titanic steams inexorably to its appointment with the iceberg and the devastating loss of 1500 or so lives.
What you are proposing as a “better outcome” is that we still — but now, quite deliberately with knowledge aforethought — steer the (energy) Titanic into the iceberg; but we’ll
only lose, say, 500 lives because we will also prepare the lifeboats knowing where we are headed.
Well, here’s a left-field thought: we can see the Fake Paris Accord iceberg ahead; we’ve got plenty of time to avoid it completely; why not steer the shop away from it and lose no lives at all, nor the ship (of state)?
We do so by embracing the only energy future that works: new coal-fired power generation.]]
The bit that really resonates is the comment about 50% reduction in per capita emissions in 12 years.
This is supported by BOTH the principal political parties in OZ.
Apart from the logical infeasibility of the proposal - more reliability, less cost, fewer emissions - the idea of both parties embracing a policy which would reduce us to a third world nation in 12 years is quite horrifying.
And what if, in the meantime, the world starts to cool rather significantly?
[[Josh Frydenberg’s climate unicorn dead before it even exists
The Australian12:00AM November 25, 2017
TERRY MCCRANN
Business ColumnistMelbourne
I really, really, want to believe in and promote Josh Frydenberg’s Brave New Energy World. But I just can’t get over the initial hurdle that it’s a complete crock, delivered by a blessing of unicorns.
More simply, it’s going to be “dead, buried and cremated” before it even exists. It has a lifespan — if, indeed, something that doesn’t actually exist can have a lifespan — exactly equal to that of the remaining days of Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership. That is to say, they will both be consigned to the dustbin of history at the same time.
Actually, make that a threesome. Both Frydenberg’s tenure of the energy portfolio — and its co-joined environment one — along with his broader political career will go into that bin at the same time.
Possibly, with all three going before Christmas or very shortly thereafter when the government loses the Bennelong by-election and its majority.
A former federal coalition minister — who’s loss to parliament and good government has very decidedly proved his own personal gain — made a very cogent point to me during the week. And no, it wasn’t Peter Costello.
The Chinese vote is the critical vote in Bennelong. The Chinese are not happy with the current government. At the macro level they are not happy with its “tough China” policy. At the micro level, they are not happy with its curbs on Chinese investment in property.
If John Alexander loses the “China vote” he loses Bennelong. And that would be the case against a generic Labor candidate. He is not facing a generic candidate but one who is both very (politically) attractive and has a big public brand — which we saw in a recent US presidential election is the single biggest plus a political candidate can have.
The inevitable approaching political demise of Frydenberg is something of a minor tragedy in all this. He is — or rather, brutally, was — the outstanding member of that next Liberal generation. More specifically, he best combined the two streams of the Liberal tradition, so critical to both political and even more policy success: the conservative and the small-l liberal.
Like all such tragedies it was ultimately self-created. Frydenberg made his terminal decision just over a year ago, the day after the US presidential election, when he chose to handcuff himself to Turnbull politically and to the Fake Paris Climate Accord in policy terms.
Donald Trump’s victory had given Australia both an “out” from the Paris Accord and, indeed, imposed an imperative on us to seize it. What was inherently stupid and against both the national interest and the individual interests of every single Australian (even if most are themselves too stupid to appreciate that) became after President Trump not only stupid but almost literally insane.
Yet Prime Minister Turnbull, in a Kevin-Rudd like exercise of globally focused utterly fatuous moral posturing, chose to deliberately and publicly double down on the Fake Accord — we might not have electricity or a functioning economy, but I am determined that we’ll “always have Paris” — and, in the privacy of his own fantasies, aimed to instruct the new President on the errors of his ways.
Frydenberg had a very simple binary choice: to reject the dead-end stupidity or to stand with it and Turnbull.
And interestingly, by the
bye, also with foreign minister and our now temporary deputy PM Julie Bishop, who seems to pop up, Woody Allen Zelig-style.
Frydenberg’s choice then unfolded inexorably and so excruciatingly over the 12 months to today’s embarrassing denouement, in the enveloping twilight of his and the PM’s now co-joined political careers.
The so-called NEG or National Energy Guarantee is dammed upfront by the total irreconcilability of its three aims: to ensure both affordable and reliable electricity (and, indirectly, gas) and meeting our commitments under the Fake Paris Accord to cut emissions of carbon dioxide by 26-28 per cent by 2030.
This, not exactly incidentally, means we have to cut emissions per capita by closer to an economy-killing and individual-impoverishing 50 per cent, and do so, in barely a dozen years, thanks to our crazy-stupid “build another Canberra ever year” high immigration, for want of a better word, policy.
Unless and until you repeal the basic laws of physics, you are not going to get cheaper and even more impossibly reliable energy than that provided by fossil fuels or nuclear fission.
All attempts to “make” so-called renewable energy “work” by including batteries or pumping stuff uphill is essentially like embarking on designing a square wheel just because, just because, the round one is so, well, demode. Hell, the round one’s been around almost since man discovered fossil fuels.
The modelling Frydenberg has so desperately, embarrassingly, presented in support of his NEG is like all the — Fake — modelling we have seen to tell us we really, truly, can have our climate unicorn and get to eat its delicious meat at the same time.
The all-critical three words that damn the supposed conclusion that we will get cheaper power at the end of it all are these: compared to “business as usual”.
Frankly Josh, if you can allow me to provide a variation of the overused Titanic metaphor; that yes the present policy mess and energy investment inertia is the equivalent of the historical record: the Titanic steams inexorably to its appointment with the iceberg and the devastating loss of 1500 or so lives.
What you are proposing as a “better outcome” is that we still — but now, quite deliberately with knowledge aforethought — steer the (energy) Titanic into the iceberg; but we’ll
only lose, say, 500 lives because we will also prepare the lifeboats knowing where we are headed.
Well, here’s a left-field thought: we can see the Fake Paris Accord iceberg ahead; we’ve got plenty of time to avoid it completely; why not steer the shop away from it and lose no lives at all, nor the ship (of state)?
We do so by embracing the only energy future that works: new coal-fired power generation.]]
The bit that really resonates is the comment about 50% reduction in per capita emissions in 12 years.
This is supported by BOTH the principal political parties in OZ.
Apart from the logical infeasibility of the proposal - more reliability, less cost, fewer emissions - the idea of both parties embracing a policy which would reduce us to a third world nation in 12 years is quite horrifying.
And what if, in the meantime, the world starts to cool rather significantly?