Australia’s plunge into Orwellian dystopianism is like the lottery winner – as Australia has been with our vast resource base – who loses everything, becoming broken and bankrupt, squandering their gain over a decade or so.
Judith Sloan expertly dismantled Chris Bowen’s new fuel standards claims in her column (“Bowen way off track on drive for new fuel standards”, 20/2).
Has anybody noticed how the energy and climate policy is dictated by the seven-year plan to 2030, in some states now an additional five-year plan to 2035, and of course the next imbecilic target to 2050? This is classic socialist Marxist industrial planning. Add to that the absurdity of 2023 being declared the hottest year on record globally, based on a comparison with 1850-1900 records, and we can be assured we are all being taken for frogs.
It was not until about 1890, with the invention of electricity and new equipment able to measure 3am temperatures, that accurate readings began.
Peter R. Tredenick, Laidley, Qld
Judith Sloan misses the point in her article, which demonstrates outrage at the idea we will be financially penalised for choosing to buy a big polluting vehicle. I think we should be.
With all the knowledge we have about what pollution is doing – and will do in the future – to our planet, it is unbelievable that someone is worried only about having the right to pollute interfered with. It’s time governments, industries, organisations, households and individuals took some climate responsibility. Reduce pollution where you can, not increase it.
Dennis O’Hara, Wanniassa, ACT
From unaffordable and unreliable energy, to our rural communities being torn apart by unscrupulous and unfettered foreign renewables developers, and to industries being forced to close or move offshore, now we have an imminent increase in the cost of new cars, all under the banner of Labor’s emissions reduction goals.
The fact Labor’s policies only entrench the global use of fossil fuels because renewables and batteries are extremely materials-intensive is totally lost on the narrow-minded, virtue-signalling Albanese government.
Just as worldwide investment in renewables increases, so do emissions. Net zero by 2050 is a pipe dream.
China accounts for 30 per cent of both global manufacturing and global emissions.
This pattern is followed by India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia and other places where pragmatic governments can’t afford the virtue-signalling policies of the West.
In effect, the erosion in living standards being imposed on the Australian public through Labor’s energy policies is all for a lost cause. A change in leadership towards common sense and pragmatism is an urgent priority.
Ron Hobba, Camberwell, Vic
EnergyAustralia chief executive Mark Collette says Australia must build new sources of electricity before allowing coal to exit or risk energy grid instability (“Build before coal exits: energy boss”, 20/2).
Collette’s comments echo the Australian Energy Market Operator’s warning that unless Australia gets on with rapidly expanding new renewable energy developments, the country faces a decade of unreliable electricity supply (“Neoen to double its renewables pipeline”, 19/2). What Collette and the AEMO have difficulty in grasping is that because they are entirely dependent on the weather, renewables are incapable of guaranteeing reliable power and grid stability.
We can throw all the renewables we like at the nation’s energy system and it won’t make an iota of difference.
We can back up renewables with batteries and pumped hydro and whatever else we can lay our hands on, and still reliable power and grid stability will elude us.
What we need to understand is that once our coal-fired power stations are kicked out of the energy system and renewables are running the show, we will be goners. Being forced to try to manage under a regime of weak, inefficient, intermittent renewable energy will kill our businesses and industries, our jobs and our ability to lead a normal life.
That’s the warning Collette and the AEMO ought to be giving us, because we sure as hell won’t be getting any such alert from the renewables-obsessed Albanese government.
Dale Ellis, Innisfail, Qld
Extracted in full from: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/letters/sevenyear-road-to-dystopia-with-the-new-fuel-standards/news-story/fc649a0c539ae5dcb8486e1f2fa139c0
