Australian politicians are trying to maintain their never-ending climate war on carbon fuels while waging a lockdown war on the elusive COVID-19 virus and also provoking a trade war with China, our biggest trading partner.
We cannot afford three hopeless and costly wars at once. One would be too many.
The political war on carbon fuels has damaged the environment with forests of “green” power poles, flats of ground-sterilizing solar panels, hills of bird-slicing wind turbines plus spider-webs of new power lines and roads.
This mess produces unreliable expensive electricity, sterilizes land, and wastes water to keep solar panels clean. And imagine the debris when a cyclone sails through a “farm” of panels or a “forest” of turbines.
This expensive and unreliable power, plus green taxes and regulations, has destroyed much of Australia’s manufacturing, processing, and refining industries – all for zero climate benefits.
The lockdown war is crippling many industries; especially tourism, aviation, education, retail, sports, local pubs, media, rural shows, and auctions, and even the famous Brisbane Ekka.
Attempts by politicians to hide their lockdown damage with handouts for everyone have destroyed budgets and will cripple the currency, reward unemployment, and produce another depression generation.
On top of all this, our politicians are stumbling into a trade war with China. This has produced swift retaliation on Australia’s export industries and we will soon discover that most of our manufactured goods now come from China, because we have driven our factories out of Australia with uncompetitive power and labor costs and excessive red and green tape.
What to do? Four simple things:
Firstly, abandon the climate war on carbon fuels and withdraw from the useless and destructive Paris Climate Agreement. It will never cool the climate, even if that was a sensible goal.
Abolish all subsidies and taxes supporting intermittent green energy and legislate that any generator feeding into the grid must be able to supply 24/7 power, either from their own backup facilities or under contracts.
Secondly, unlock the gates – dismantle COVID-19 barriers, green gates, red tape, and bureaucratic barriers. Lockdown can’t stop the virus. It just slows down its spread, delaying the development of community immunity.
Individuals and families are free to self-isolate should they choose that option. Keep them informed but don’t lock healthy law-abiding people behind barriers, spy cameras, police and troops.
Economic recovery needs to encourage and fast-track sensible infrastructure and development proposals. We should also abolish stamp duty and capital gains tax and reduce income tax.
Governments should prohibit real pollution of land, air, and water, but allow farmers, fishermen, foresters, explorers, miners, and entrepreneurs to get on with building and expanding their businesses.
Thirdly, spread the recession pain to all protected government sectors. Cut taxes, and reduce the numbers and benefits for all in politics, bureaucracy, government media, academia, and all able-bodied welfare recipients with no dependents.
Finally, stop publicly poking China with a pointy stick (as we did in the COVID-19 witch-hunt.)
We do not need a trade war which will cost us dearly. Wait until Bunnings runs out of Chinese-built Ryobi tools and lithium batteries, the greens run out of Chinese solar panels, and Chinese imports of Australian coal, cattle, wool, barley, wheat, and so forth are hit with tariffs or quotas.
Quiet diplomacy and a more competitive industry will achieve more than populist public posturing and provocation of our powerful neighbor.
We need to quietly restore our secondary industries, diversify our markets, get some real defense capacity and cultivate allies in Asia and the Anglosphere.
Viv Forbes has scientific and financial qualifications, experience in government and industry, and a long history of observing and participating in Australian politics.
In the land down under their going down the path and the leftists robbers are waiting
LFTR’s : Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors are the Power Plant of the Future. This is the answer. No CO2 Emissions, Can’t Melt-Down, Contains its Own Waste, Breeds its Own Fuel, Can’t be Weaponized, 60 Year Operational Life, Modular, Factory produced and can be transported by train, truck, plane or ship. Competitive with Coal and Natural Gas. What’s not to like? Its nuclear! but it has all the above safety factors built in. Check it out.
I had never seen anything on liquid salt fuel where the liquid salt also contains the fissile material. A plus of using the Thorium fuel cycle is that the only isotope of thorium is Th-232 so no costly enrichment that is needed to use U-235.
Watching Sky Weather just now, I was regaled on how two dozen leading climate scientists working for four years narrowed down the range of temperature rise to be experienced from a doubling of pre-industrial atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to two a half degrees to over four degrees Celsius.
This was done by applying models to the task. The pressure on Australian governments to continue to panic is applied by a constant media drip feed of this sort of pseudo-science dressed up as advanced mathematics.
It is proposed that reducing fossil fuel emissions will slow down the rate at which atmospheric CO2 concentration is rising; but without the evidence that atmospheric composition is responsive to fossil fuel emissions.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/05/18/12479/