Net zero emissions is the public policy embodiment of corporate BS. Anyone who has worked for a large corporation has sat through mind-numbing Powerpoint slideshows, with liberal helpings of buzzwords like ‘synergy’, ‘thought leadership’ and ‘data-driven’.
Net zero is the ultimate corporate buzzword and that’s why so many woke corporations have fallen for it. Many small businesses, who understand the day to day realities of meeting payroll with cash, remain opposed.
Many buzzwords are harmless, and when working as a corporate robot you can just mouth lip service to them, laugh at the latest Dilbert cartoon, and get on with life. Net zero emissions is not a harmless buzzword.
If the Australian government formally adopts a net zero emissions target it will weaponise the bureaucracy against any major job-creating, nation-building project in this country. The next time someone wants to build an Adani mine or a dam (yes dams create emissions), or even an airstrip to open a new resort in the Great Barrier Reef, Canberra will ask how will you ‘offset’ the emissions.
This means people who build mines, grow food or construct an airstrip will have to pay other people to plant trees or do something else to offset their emissions. It costs money to do these things so a net zero target will operate as a big tax on developing our nation.
Now some net zero advocates will say that we will invent things that will make carbon emission reductions free. The latest fad is hydrogen.
I support investing in new technologies. I do not support gambling with people’s jobs in the hope that an uncertain thing turns out. You don’t take on a mortgage with the plan to pay it back by winning the lotto.
As I have said, the net zero plan being presented at the moment is not a plan, it is a prayer. It is a big prayer that hydrogen will one day fall down from heaven like manna. The Prime Minister may very well believe in miracles, but I don’t think we should be gambling people’s jobs based on their existence.
The other major reason we should reject net zero is that it is a massive distraction against the major threat to our country, China.
President Xi Jinping is not even going to attend the Glasgow conference. In fairness to him, I am not sure how he could keep a straight face while the West commits collective economic suicide. China does not care about climate change action. While we have been distracted with net zero madness, China announced that it would fund more coal-fired power stations and oil exploration to solve its current energy crisis. It then demonstrated the world’s first nuclear-capable, hypersonic missile. According to the Financial Times, US intelligence and military officials are ‘stunned’ at the advancement.
China now has space nukes but they can’t match us for plans to reach net zero.
Europe has tried to reach net zero and because they don’t produce their own energy anymore prices have soared, there are huge lines at petrol stations and factories have closed. Europe’s energy needs have been outsourced to an authoritarian Russian regime that supplies them gas when Putin decides to. And, by the way, Putin has not committed to attending Glasgow yet either.
In a comical irony, basic food items have run out because you need gas to make carbon dioxide! Carbon dioxide is used as a refrigerant gas essential for the transportation of food from the country to the city. The UK is at serious risk of running out of food for the first time since World War II just as we may very well be on the cusp of World War III.
Over the past decade, Queensland’s Liberal National party has rightfully stood against the radical carbon emissions cuts that would weaken Australia’s economy and security. We have won every federal election fought on this basis.
At the last election, Angus Taylor, Josh Frydenberg, Scott Morrison, I and many others warned that Labor’s proposed 45 per cent reduction in carbon emissions would wreck the Australian economy. Two years later we are set to turn around and say, actually, it will all be fine. And, in fact we got it so wrong, that we will make lots of money from a 100 per cent cut in emissions! Sorry about that Bill Shorten.
Kevin Rudd lost his prime ministership the day he dropped his carbon tax scheme. He did so because the polling told him it had become unpopular. The problem was a year before he had claimed that ‘climate change is the greatest moral challenge of our time’. Rudd never regained the trust of the Australian people.
The LNP is looking over this ‘Rudd precipice’ now. Will we stand by our principles and the people who gave up their free time and money to support us? Or will we become the conservative version of Kevin Rudd, an empty, poll-driven kite, that blows with the wind rather than stands against it when it is right to do so?
The most pathetic example of the West’s decline this week was the House of Windsor’s cringeworthy diatribes against world leaders. Some leaders have the gall to prioritise the development of their poor countries (that the UK once ruled and left poor), instead of returning to the mother country to kiss the ring at Glasgow. The only reason the small British isles off the coast of Europe ended up ruling the world was because they were the first to harness the energy of coal through the industrial revolution.
If only we could harness such hypocrisy and turn it into electricity, climate change would be solved.
The monarchy has gone woke just like every other corporation. These people agree with Kevin Rudd and view climate change as a ‘moral’ challenge. In this way, climate change activism has become the new ‘white man’s burden’.
This is how wokeism is far from harmless. Lots of woke obsessions are complete BS, but their advocates have a puritan streak which makes woke policies that on first blush appear to be just a joke, a punishing reality. That is why, as someone else pointed out recently, everything woke turns to ….
The net zero emissions BS will turn out no different.
