'Climate' Scam in Oz Goes from Bad to Worse

As a major producer and exporter of thermal coal and natural gas, with lots more to be tapped, Australia is well placed to ride out the forlorn pursuit of renewables. Instead, Australia’s governments fancifully see themselves leading the daring quest to save the planet. Accordingly, policies of uncommon futility and inanity ensue. Two prime examples came to malodourous fruition in the lead up to Christmas. Christmas gifts, if you will, for a population which richly deserves all that it gets having swallowed the climate scam hook, line and sinker.

The Energy Security Board (ESB), just one of a multiplicity of climate-change authorities, had an integral part in the derring-do. Alas, though full of activists, the ESB didn’t stay the course. Bizarrely, common sense won out. The ESB oversaw a scheme, called the “capacity mechanism,” intended to ease Australia through the transition from fossil fuels to wind and solar. The scheme calls for payments to energy providers in order that they might have capacity at the ready when renewables failed to deliver. Natural gas was very much in the mix, as you would expect, as also was coal for the time being. A detailed design of the scheme was to be delivered to federal and state governments in early 2023.

Spot the problem? The envisaged use of fossil fuels in the transition is not nearly pure enough for these clean-climate times. And, last August, the ESB was given a damn good telling off by pedigreed greens and lost its carriage of the capacity mechanism – sullied and shamed by its continued flirtation with coal and gas. Each state decided that it would do its own thing and that thing did not include “dirty” coal or gas.

No coal, please, we're Australian.

At this point, sane people might think that they're being gaslighted. Surely, a shortfall of wind and sun must be met with a flow of baseload power. Logically, that’s where gas-fired peaking plants might fill the breach. Apparently not. Pumped hydro is envisaged, though it is missing in action. Batteries are envisaged, though their effect is trivial in the scheme of things. Green hydrogen is envisaged, though it is pipedream. Finally, interstate power swaps are envisaged; based on massive overbuilding of not-yet-built wind and solar farms and thousands of not-yet-built kilometres of transmission infrastructure. And, still, what will happen during evenings of extensive wind droughts? Cold candlelit suppers ahead.

It’s senseless. But, best to remember, when it comes to climate policies, it’s never so bad that it can’t get worse. And so it is that Australia’s government, headed by Anthony Albanese of the far left of the left-wing Labor Party, recently had a well-worn idea which had proved popular among the apparatchiks in communist Eastern Europe.

Natural gas and coal prices have soared in recent times, as they have throughout the world. Consequently, the Australian Department of Treasury forecast that electricity prices would rise by 56 percent over the period to June 2025 and gas prices by 44 percent. What to do, when you’ve foolishly promised repeatedly that electricity prices would fall? Encourage new supplies of coal and gas? For example, give the go ahead to the Narrabri project which promises to deliver vast quantities of coal-seam gas to the domestic market. Certainly not. To wit, a spokesperson from Santos commenting on the continuing impasse:

Since 2012, Santos [Australia’s largest producer of natural gas] has spent more than $1.5 billion trying to get our Narrabri Gas Project approved and developed; a project that is 100 percent committed to the domestic gas market.

Heck, more dirty gas is needless when socialist economics has the answer. When prices rise too much for comfort impose price caps. Consequently, without meaningful consultation, the federal Government rushed through legislation before Christmas; titled, in true newspeak fashion, the Energy Price Relief Plan. This capped the price of gas at A$12 per gigajoule for one year with a permanent regime to ensure gas prices are set on “reasonable cost-plus basis.” Whatever that means in Newspeak.

Of course, the legislation also gives the government power to compel gas producers to supply gas at the capped price. Socialists have their playbook and know how nasty profiteering capitalists will try to wriggle out of supplying their products at below market value. Separately, the states of Queensland and New South Wales have agreed to cap the price of black coal to $125 per tonne and lose royalties; in exchange for lots of free federal money.

Role model for the future.

To show how far-gone things have gotten rotten down under, the head of Treasury Steven Kennedy supported the idea of price controls. No surprise that he was recognized in 2016 for outstanding public service in the area of climate-change policy. Climate activists have infiltrated every aspect of Australia’s public life.

Kevin Gallagher, CEO of Santos, described the legislation as a form of "Soviet-style nationalization.”

[It] will result in companies needing fiscal stability agreements with the government before new gas supply projects can take investment decisions in order to secure capital, just as would be the case if they were operating in Argentina, Venezuela or Nigeria.

Meg O'Neill, CEO of global oil and gas producer Woodside and chairman of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, made the point that price controls will lessen investment and drive supply out of the marketplace. I wonder where she got that strange idea. Probably from economics 101. In any event, it doesn’t seem to have yet penetrated the minds of the geniuses who form the Labor government’s brain trust. Woodside claimed that contractual talks to supply gas to twenty customers had been suspended. Shell made a similar point. Not surprising. How can supply contracts be finalized when no one knows what the regulated price will be in twelve months’ time?

Socialists wear mind-limiting blinkers. How else to arrive at simplistic solutions and think them sublime? Unseen effects of their superficial solutions, as the 19th-century French Economist Frédéric Bastiat put it, are studiously ignored. The rest of us are condemned to live them out. "Where did you put the heavy sweaters and candles Ma?"

Merry Christmas from the Pipeline!

A blessed day for Christians everywhere for 2,000 years.

Merry Christmas from Joe Manchin

Senator Joe Manchin, last of the Blue Dog Democrats, has announced that he is officially a "No" on the fiscally irresponsible, $3.5 trillion "Build Back Better" bill. Which is to say that he's dropped a lump of West Virginia coal into Joe Biden's stocking, while delivering mirth and jollity to the rest of us. Just call him Father Christmas!

The details are spicy -- supposedly Senator Manchin was angry (understandably) at the White House for releasing personalized statements targeting him for holding up BBB (at a time when he's been continually harassed by far left activists, who've taken to camping outside his house) when they know full well that he's far from the only Democratic senator with serious reservations about the bill.

In the end, frustrated by the long, pointless negotiations, he gave the White House just 30 minutes' notice before he went on Fox News to drop his bombshell. In the interim, he refused to take the panicked phone calls of White House staffers, desperate to head him off at the pass.

So, what did the senior senator from West Virginia save us from? The New York Post explains:

The $5 trillion BBB bill would have been a handout to Democrat-backed unions, federalizing child-care and pre-K workers into their ranks. It was full of gifts for everyone from rich people living in Democratic states (via the state and local tax deduction) to journalists (via media subsidies). Besides being a colossal waste of money, its “climate change” subsidies would have hurt Manchin’s state of West Virginia...

The legislation would have driven up the cost of everything for everyone — adding to our already historic inflation. It was nowhere close to being “paid for,” as President Biden claimed. And yes, it is $5 trillion, not the $1.75 trillion Democrats dishonestly advertised — by pretending programs would disappear after a year or two, when they knew they’d extend them forever. Even not accounting for that gimmick, the bill would add at least $367 billion to the federal deficit.

Not jolly enough for you yet? Then check out this piece at NPR, which sobs over Manchin's decision to destroy the world in a climate change-y blaze just for kicks:

With billions of dollars for clean energy, the Build Back Better legislation has the potential to substantially and rapidly cut heat-trapping emissions in the U.S. But Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., rejected the bill on Sunday, and that means Build Back Better is effectively dead at a time when scientists say the world can't afford to wait on climate change. "It's really disheartening," says Leah Stokes, associate professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "We don't have any more decades left to waste, and failure is not an option."

Why on earth did they seek out a poli-sci professor to comment on the climate situation? More:

The legislation earmarked $555 billion for renewable energy and clean transportation incentives over a decade in the country's largest climate change investment ever. The policies are crucial for President Biden's goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 50%-52% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels. Even that goal may not be enough to avoid climate change's most destructive impacts, scientists warn.

Note that even BBB wasn't extreme enough for these people, for all their wailing and gnashing of teeth over its demise. Build Back Better is already pretty unpopular in Manchin's home state (it polls worse there than in the country overall, and that's saying something). In any event, for braving this near universal condemnation, Senator Manchin has made all of the right enemies. Merry Christmas, Senator!

Merry Christmas from Greta Thunberg!

Just in time for Christmas, everybody's favorite censorious elf, courtesy of the Babylon Bee:

Can a Senator Karen doll be far behind?

Have a Happy Covid Holiday!

Look out Americans! If the Canadian media is a reliable indicator, the days leading up to Halloween and Thanksgiving (and Christmas down the road) will be filled with news stories and public statements urging people to take satisfaction in excluding the unvaccinated from holiday events and telling them they’re bad people. 

“Unvaccinated relatives?” a Global News headline read in the days leading up to Canadian Thanksgiving (October 11 this year), “Here are the risks around the Thanksgiving table.” The article demonstrates how far journalists are willing to go to maintain fear and compliance amongst the public.

Don’t feel guilty for shunning relatives on Thanksgiving, writer Rachel Gilmore advises. It’s the unvaccinated who should feel guilty, and it’s your right—perhaps even your duty -- to try to make them so. Health authorities are quoted providing “safety” suggestions, such as setting the table outdoors (bring your parka!) and forcing dinner guests to be tested for Covid before ringing the doorbell. It certainly seems that the much-anticipated vaccines, far from providing our route back to normality, have become the occasion for even greater paranoia.

I've been vaccinated. How about you?

While pretending to be reasonable and empathetic, the article deliberately stokes division. According to the author, “research shows” that it is best to conduct conversations with the great unvaxxed with “empathy and respect.” One wouldn’t have thought research was necessary for such a facile insight, but it sounds fine in theory.

Yet how can one manifest empathy and respect in the absence of any understanding of the rational concerns that motivate the unvaccinated? How can there be respect when the quoted experts compare the unvaccinated to drunk drivers, stressing their lethal (and perhaps criminal) recklessness? How can there be empathy when there is no mention whatsoever of vaccine risks or the far superior immunity of those who have already had and recovered from the virus? 

Moreover, the article provides at best half-truths about vaccination, tying itself in logical knots from the start. “The vaccines are really effective, but they’re most effective when you’re surrounded by vaccinated people,” we’re told by an assistant dean of biomedical sciences at McMaster U. How “well” is a vaccine working when it can’t protect against the virus it was created to protect against? 

And how odd that, just as with the masks we’ve had to wear for a year and a half—which allegedly provide protection mainly to those around us (thus justifying moral outrage against the unmasked)—that we now find the vaccines, too, are primarily about doing our part for others.

In celebrating the vaccines and warning against the danger of the unvaccinated, the Thanksgiving article manifests two irreconcilable goals: 1) to stress that the vaccines can’t protect you from the unvaccinated; and 2) to defend the efficacy of the vaccines. These goals cannot be accomplished together without significant logical contortion and repeated mental squinting of the eyes.

Look -- a breakthrough!

“Breakthrough” infections (i.e. infections experienced by the vaccinated) are very rare, the article stresses, but they’re not rare enough to be disregarded. Okay. What about breakthrough infections caused by the vaccinated? Most of us have by now heard about the study showing that even in an environment with a 96.2 percent vaccination rate, and even with the vaccinated persons wearing medical masks, virus transmission can and does occur.

But this fact is not mentioned in the article because it would interfere with the straightforward moral polarity the author is promoting. If even the vaccinated may pose a danger, whom can one safely invite to dinner? And perhaps just as importantly, how can one lecture others on their moral irresponsibility if no one is pure? The sensible solution—to recognize that nothing in life is without risk and to practice ethical humility—is never considered here. 

Not content with sowing division amongst family members, the article goes even further. Without any logical transition, it expands its purview to include the imposition by government and other powerful entities of mandates that coerce vaccination. 

The article quotes Vardit Ravitsky, bio-ethicist at the Université de Montréal, about the justice of suspending human rights during Covid. “Usually, our human rights and freedoms are the main consideration in our society,” she announces casually (and we know a big BUT is on its way), “but we’re living in a very particular point in time.” It’s quite a leap from eating turkey alone to being forced to surrender basic rights and freedoms, yet Ravitsky links both in the logically strained and simplistic manner we’ve grown accustomed to from our health authorities. “This is all temporary. We will get out of this,” she reassures us vaguely, “But in order to get out of it and get back to respect for human rights and your liberty to choose what to do, we need the vaccine.”

Put another way, human rights and the freedom to choose are so important that they can be—must be—suspended for an indeterminate period of time precisely so that we can return to them at some vague point in the distant future. And until that time, don’t gripe about your rights. 

Oh, shut up.

One might respond to Ravitsky that it is precisely when our legal and human rights principles are tested during difficult times that we need to stand by them most staunchly; rights only matter when they are threatened. But it doesn’t seem that Ravitsky is genuinely very interested in individual rights—or ethics, for that matter. Is it ethical to bully a family member, on pain of withdrawal of solidarity, to take a medication with not-insignificant adverse effects and unknown long-term risks? Ravitsky certainly thinks so.

This smarmy article clearly shows that, whatever else it has done, Covid has provided the convenient rationale for an unprecedented degree of self-righteous intrusion by experts into the private lives of allegedly free citizens. It is a testimony to the inordinate fear produced by this virus, out of all proportion to its real threat (as shown by the low infection fatality rate), that so many people have not only been willing to endorse the meddling—and to follow the often-ludicrous guidelines—but even to demand more.