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What would it take to end our nation’s climate madness? I used to think a few cold showers and the gas running out while the soufflé was in the oven would be enough to induce our Green-washed ruling class to take a more sceptical attitude to “renewable energy”. Now I wonder. These are the people, unassailable in towering banks or parliamentary offices, who run the country, who influence things, make them happen. Right now what they are making happen is the certainty of power shortages as a result of their quasi-superstitious fear of conventional energy generation.
This class determines its political projects and the rest of us pay for them through taxes or surcharges. They may occasionally burble about “the welfare of all Australians” but in effect, they are not interested in us lesser mortals and don’t care if our lives are a struggle, as they’ve shown by pursuing the policies that have given us shamefully rising power prices we scrimp to pay but the nobs can easily afford, and if themselves “renewables” investors, make money out of.
But once their own comfortable existence is even remotely discommoded, they demand that something be done. We saw this in Melbourne when the depredations of youthful ethnic gangs in poorer suburbs were met by lofty ruling-class denials that any gangs existed except in the “racist” minds of the householders complaining. When the gangs struck out into the districts inhabited by the people who run things, all of a sudden it turned out that, yes, they were real, they were a social problem and the police snapped into action like magic.
Faced with the inevitable failure of wind and solar energy, which even if we could count on endless gales and sunny days and clothe the landscape with forests of ugly windmills and drape every roof in photovoltaic panels would not generate enough power to make up for the fossil fuels we are banishing, how will the ruling classes and their political puppets cope, particularly the smug Teals who were elected solely on a platform of climate fiction? They have set themselves such bizarre targets – net zero non-renewables by 2035 is one of the wilder flights of fancy – that it would be a most embarrassing climbdown to follow the European example and stay with dirty old coal to keep the country lit and heated. And don’t even think nuclear: green energy luddites have the vapours at the mention of the name.
The sensible thing, of course, would be to abandon the obsession with renewables. It’s clear by now that the climate apocalypse so long predicted isn’t going to happen. Consider just one high-profile prophet and his empty warnings – our future monarch. In 2009, Prince Charles, speaking from the profundity of his scientific knowledge, announced “a dangerously narrow window” of a hundred months to avert “climate catastrophe”. After that window shut five years ago without any apparent collapse of civilisation did he say he was sorry to have misled us and blushingly refrain from further interference? No, he blithely revised his estimate and announced another window, supposedly giving us a further 35 years.
Common sense will not prevail because there are too many vested interests in climate alarmism to allow the whole charade to be called off now. What then will the ruling classes do to protect themselves when, as night follows day, power becomes scarcer and less reliable? They will entrench even deeper the differences between themselves and us, between those who have and those who have not.
There won’t be enough power to keep everything going so they will make sure they get all they want, and whatever’s left over can be shared out among the rest of us. They will do this as they do everything else, through their superior wealth. They will create a category of “premium consumers” – platinum users, gold users, some name like that — who, by paying extra to the energy companies, will be guaranteed a constant supply of power, even at times of peak use.
This extra fee will be set high enough so that, when added to the already exaggerated costs of energy, it is beyond the resources of the average household. It is ordinary families who will have to put up with the cold showers or cook their meals on a sputtering primus stove by decidedly unromantic candlelight because of windless weather and daily grey skies.
This will be presented as progress and wrapped in weaselly advertising. “Power that’s tailored to your home needs,” the unctuous voice-over will intone through an image of swirling steam. “When you sign up with GoodGas you get just the amount of power you want.” Translated, this will mean you’re offered a “budget” contract with the gas or electricity company stipulating supply at certain hours of the day or week. (The small print, naturally, will “regret that it may not be always possible to maintain supply at the contracted times”.)
Then what? Having imposed “net zero” and condemned the rest of us to shiver and starve, do “renewables” enthusiasts naively imagine that our privations and “good example” will touch the consciences of polluters like China and India, whose huge emissions make ours look like a puff of smoke from a Greenie’s spliff? That these industrial giants will shut down their coal-powered economies just in time to prevent the planet becoming a molten ball or whatever its supposed fate is?
There are no two ways about it. Either they are dumb enough to believe that or the whole net-zero crusade is a fraud, just another weapon from the Marxist armoury in the never-ending strategy to weaken and ultimately destroy the Western democracies. Climate catastrophists are either fools or quislings.
Just the other day I noticed a fuel guzzler 4wd with Greens and Stop Adani bumper stickers.
A very prescient piece, Christopher.
It is time for us to start yelling ‘we’re all in this together’. And of course, we know what happened there. Anyone with political pull and/or big money bought or begged their way out of home quarantine, border barriers and pesky lockdown restrictions in general because they were ‘special’ people. Which is why Boris Johnson’s carry-on-partying raised British ire to eleventy. Lest we forget.
My probably forlorn hope is that this time, enough ordinary people will be jack of such stuff, and that the elites will suffer along with the rest of us or risk mobs of angry citizens storming their citadels. Sadly, it is not as easy to take up pitchforks and crowbars as it used to be. After Jan 6 2021 in the US, which simply showed how scared elites are of a few roisterers in fancy dress, elite security will be tight world-wide. I suspect though that such blatant reminders of privilege as the $350k electric Merc (with purchased access to a lively power plug) will be a rather unsafe vehicle to drive down any suburban street.
China’s risible and illusory commitments under the Paris accords – the only way they could be coaxed into signing up – are that they can build as many new coal-fired power stations as they like until 2030 (and they are building hundreds), and are not obliged to de-commission any of them after that time, ever. And yet there are those who solemnly maintain that China is a sort of environmental good citizen.
The reality is that the CCP will never, ever let the environment get in the way of making money, or, more significantly, its strategic interests.
The trouble is..the conditioning has been so extreme that the modern faux green cannot think.I entered a home in Tasmania and walked pasted an old diesel 4wd.The house was connected to the grid.There was a photo of Al Gore on the mantle.The owner of the house had been to the Gores training camp in. Melbourne.He was a mad believer…but had no problem doing the exact opposite to what he preached..I did enjoy mocking him with rhetorical questions…
Some of us grew up in places where there was no electricity and that was a fact of life, no radio, a wood stove, copper boiler, maybe a kero fridge, the milk, cream, and butter came from the house cows, veggies from the garden, backyard outhouse with choko vine for decoration. This will be far worse than that that because almost every thing we have today depends on electricity and when that electricity becomes intermittent and food spoils, garage doors won’t open, trains won’t run, and all other associated stuff that depends on electricity fails, absolute chaos will reign.
Botswana O’Hooligan,
Not even a “free light” Southern Cross windmill?
FNQ lbloveday, lots of water, too much water in the “wet” and one wonders why that nice Mr. Flannery bought on the Hawkesbury instead of investing in a tree house on a hill in Katoomba.
The German Minister for the Interior is quoted as saying that “poor people are the enemies of the State” – because they are likely to demonstrate, riot even, when they cannot afford to heat their homes in winter. [Sources are various German news outlets + Google Translate].
In short, the plebs will be labelled domestic terrorists for being unable to afford home fuels and then subject to police militia attentions.
In my view, the Aus middle class will never arc up.
Today I noticed two very expensive electric cars being charged at the local free council charging stations. AEMO tells me that 50% of that power came from gas…and that on a good day for wind.
How many vanities can one see in this little scene?…poor ratepayers subsidising the EV owning rich, who think they are saving the planet, but are using a big chunk of hydrocarbons in vehicles with huge non recyclable liabilities, including batteries using rare earth minerals from child miners.
During the last financial year 65% of electricity on the east coast came from fossil fuels https://www.spasmodicenergy.com/Pages/Sources.aspx?start=01/07/2021&end=30/06/2022
Wind was 11.92% so owning an EV means it is principally driven by fossil fuels at the moment. Don’t worry though 21% of the fossil fuel component will be closed before the end of the decade.
I have said for many years that the climate scam was dreamed up by the communists who realsed that they could not defeat the West with guns and bombs so became Greens instead. They have been fabulously effective and so far have won every battle they waged while we stood back and allowed it to happen. The only way out is to vote the leftists out while we still have the vote. It will not be easy since Australia just voted in a socialist government with the support of the communist Greens. Of course the so called conservatives are riddled with leftists like Matt Kean and Simon Birmingham and are thus prevented from having a truly conservative party to represent them. The only way to stop the rot is to get involved, join the Liberals or Nationals and ensure that only conservative candidates are preselected. The Teals saw off some of the left leaning detrius but there are many more to go.
I noticed that carsales.com.au has Jagwaars from $184k for new cars to around $100k for used.
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I just can’t wait to get one for me and another for the wife so that we can do our bit to save the world.
Forgot to mention that those Jagwaars are EVs.
Brian
Those Jaguar EV’s have a nasty habit of hosting a BBQ in the middle of the night.
https://electrek.co/2018/12/10/jaguar-i-pace-fire-investigating-cause/#:~:text=A%20Jaguar%20I-PACE%20electric%20SUV%20caught%20on%20fire,in%20the%20middle%20of%20the%20night%20last%20Friday.
Australia’s political elite is committed to ‘net zero’. But the same elite is also quietly committed to ongoing mass immigration and a ‘Big Australia’. How they intend to drastically reduce emissions while expanding the population by tens of millions is never quite explained.
“They will create a category of “premium consumers”
-Some consumers are ‘more equal’ than others, comrade.
I agree, Elizabeth Beare, that your hope that “ordinary People” might make a stand against the predatory practices of the elites, is probably forlorn. In fact, I would say it is hopeless to expect any sort of rational behaviour from the bulk of Australia’s citizenry.
Generations of brainwashing from the Deep State’s education system and media corporations has left most Aussies without any capacity for independent thought or reasoning. The horse has bolted and it is pointless to shut the gate. A new hegemony has been established following the Antonio Gramsci formula of cultural change through multiculturalism and the gradual colonisation and capture of the great social institutions of our expiring democracy.
Look at the Parliaments, the Public Services, the Media, the Universities, the Church and the Courts of Law. All have fallen to the Fabian assault; citizens now have no say.
The degradation of our culture can be seen in the claim of a mandate from the people to do what it wishes, from a political party that achieved 32% of the primary vote in the recent election. And the alternative received only 33%!
Such is the sorry state of this nation, at its foundation the most prosperous and free of any in the world.
It is the fruit of party politics, the great curse that our founding fathers inflicted upon us, at the expense of citizens initiated referenda and recall.
A good thought Chris but unfortunately for the elites they are connected with the same wires as their minions. I have studied this for some years and even have a website and yes electricity can become so dear that most can’t afford it but I think it will reach a point that is not just the price it will be a matter of is there are any electricity available. One will have to have a private generator to keep the lights on. Remember South Australia a few years back? That is what it is going to be like state wide blackout across several states. Even elites will not be able to tolerate a total blackout of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne at the same time. I think it’s coming the only question is when.