Net Zero Is Dead Unless Aussies Go Vegan, Embrace High Inflation

Australians face giving up red meat under a net zero by 2050 climate change target – as much of the developed world questions if the goal is too ambitious.

That’s the grim warning from Queensland senator and former economist, Matt Canavan, and BAEconomics managing director Brian Fisher if the country proceeds with that environmental ambition, despite Australia’s carbon emissions representing a minuscule 1.4 percent of the global total. [bold, links added]

Both Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Labor leader Anthony Albanese have committed to either eliminating or offsetting carbon emissions by 2050, despite much of Europe walking away from the same target in the face of rising energy costs, after heavily relying on Russian gas.

Australians could be making big sacrifices for nothing, in a bid to curb sea level rises, as other major economies shirk their responsibility to alleviate global warming and keep temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

Senator Canavan, a Nationals backbencher who is based in the beef cattle city of Rockhampton, said that under net-zero by 2050, meat would become a luxury item.

‘I don’t think people would vote to have red meat banned,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.

‘Welcome to your net-zero world where you’ll only be able to have a steak, chips, and salad once every three weeks or so.

‘If you’re going down to your local RSL, there just won’t be red meat on the menu.’

Food prices would also surge, beyond already high inflation levels, as agricultural fertilizers were phased out.

‘I don’t think they’d vote to have their food prices skyrocket if modern fertilizers were banned – but they come from natural gas,’ Senator Canavan said.

‘What happens to our food supply?’

Senator Canavan, who is often a lone voice opposing net zero on the Government backbench, said those calling for more ambitious action on climate change often lived in wealthy electorates.

‘This is the hypocrisy here: the inner city people are championing net-zero policies; they’ll be fine, they’ll just pay the extra prices for the eye fillet,’ he said.

‘Steak prices in Melbourne restaurants will be $100 and people will pay it.

‘It’s those that continue on with a high consumer lifestyle, and probably create more emissions than the average person through flying and traveling, who want everybody else to suffer.

‘So many of the “loud Australians” are based in inner-city electorates, and they tend to have a bigger megaphone.’

Climate change independents are polling strongly in inner-city, harbor-view Liberal Party seats in Sydney, including Wentworth in the eastern suburbs and North Sydney, and the wealthy inner-Melbourne electorates of Kooyong and Goldstein.

Dr. Fisher said both major parties had failed to explain the cost of achieving the net-zero target in less than three decades.

‘If you spend enough money on it, you can probably do it, but it’s really not that far away 2050,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.

‘The transformation we’re talking about to get to net-zero is absolutely huge.

‘Basically, what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to turn around the Australian economy which has been dependent on fossil fuels forever, basically.’

Dr. Fisher said a net zero by 2050 target would also mean banning methane gases from cows unless carbon sequestration technology was developed to store those carbon emissions underground.

‘If you look at methane, that means you’ve got to deal with burping livestock,’ he said.

‘That’s actually probably going to turn out to be pretty hard.

‘I don’t think the world’s population is going to turn vegetation overnight frankly.

‘I just don’t think that’s realistic so that means to get rid of those emissions, then you have to offset them somewhere.’

While Australia is one of the world’s larger greenhouse gas emitters per capita, the 494 million tonnes it produced in 2021 is only a fraction of China’s 11.9 billion tonnes, International Energy Agency figures show.

China produced fewer emissions for every resident, compared with Australia, but it was still responsible for a third of the world’s carbon emissions last year, as its carbon pollution increased in 2020 and 2021 following a strong economic rebound from the pandemic.

Senator Canavan, a former Productivity Commission economist, argued the net-zero by 2050 goal was effectively dead because the likes of Germany and Italy were reviving coal-fired power stations to be less reliant on natural gas from dictator Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

The United States, which also has a net-zero by 2050 target, is battling even higher inflation than Australia.

‘That doesn’t mean to me we should do nothing but it definitely means we shouldn’t go anything unless other countries are doing it too,’ Senator Canavan said.

‘There’s pretty much no one going towards net zero right now because Europe’s having to fight Putin, America’s trying to control its inflationary pressures.

‘About the only country in the world that’s moving towards net-zero is Afghanistan and they’re not doing it because they’re installing a lot of renewable energy.’

Dr. Fisher said Europe’s dependence on Russian gas made achieving a net-zero climate change target ‘extremely difficult’.

‘This has to have some impact on the speed with which we make progress towards net zero,’ he said.

‘Whether the targets are dead, that’s probably an overstatement but there’s certainly going to be some modification in terms of various countries in Europe’s ambition.’

Senator Canavan, a former resources minister, said adopting a net-zero target in less than three decades would also make it harder for Australia and other democracies to defend themselves against a more aggressive China.

‘It’s about trying to find a correct balance between reducing our carbon emissions and maintaining an industrial economy that can defend our nation, defend our democracy and I don’t think we’re getting that balance quite right in the West right now,’ he said.

Read rest at Daily Mail