Not content with causing the Grenfell tower fire, climate change is now killing Australian pensioners. Or, at least renewable energy is, according to the fourth and last Tony Abbott supporter in the Liberal partyroom, Sydney MP Craig Kelly. According to Kelly, renewable energy — contra unanimous informed opinion — has driven up power costs, meaning pensioners will freeze to death over winter. If you think this is a stretch, remember that Kelly has already compared wind turbines to “tabacco” [sic] and believes the Australian Medical Association is engaged in a conspiracy to deny the health effects of turbines, and that renewables drown children.
One awaits Kelly’s revelations about the involvement of renewables in slavery, narcotics trafficking and terrorism.
Curiously, Kelly had nothing to say when the government moved to take away the energy supplement from pensioners, designed to address the very problem he’s been complaining about for years — higher energy prices for pensioners. In fact, a check of Hansard reveals that at no point did Kelly lament what the government was doing in removing the energy supplement, despite the fact that it would make it more difficult for pensioners to meet their rising energy costs. Equally, Kelly had no words of welcome for when the government relented and kept the energy supplement, because Nick Xenophon forced them to as part of his price for supporting company tax cuts. Perhaps he’s actually unaware of the deal Scott Morrison did with Nick Xenophon, and thinks pensioners will be losing their energy supplement.
Still, Kelly makes a fair point: people on fixed incomes will struggle with rising energy prices. And it’s the Coalition that is responsible for the current surge in energy prices. The 15-20% price rises hitting east coast households should come with the label “Made in the Coalition Joint Party Room”. Australia had a low-cost, highly effective emissions abatement scheme — the Gillard government’s carbon price — but the Abbott government chucked it in for a war on renewable energy investment, some soil magic silliness and rhetoric about how coal was going to save humanity. Now, courtesy of the Coalition, we have the worst of all worlds — the fall in carbon emissions has been reversed, power prices are soaring and reliability is declining. Who would have thought the side of politics so prone to invoking “sovereign risk” and fretting about the impact of government policy on “investor certainty” would be responsible for the frightening critical investment out of Australia’s energy sector?
Kelly’s latest foray into fantasy is a classic example of projecting. He and his ilk, and most particularly his friend Tony Abbott, are to blame for pensioners freezing in their homes. And Malcolm Turnbull — the man who saved Kelly from the humiliation of losing preselection — and Josh Frydenberg are stuck with the problem of trying to fix the mess.
You have to admit it. While we continue to use the semi-religious term “renewables”, we are sitting ducks to be ridiculed by the most ignorant end of society.
The enemy is carbon. If we explicitly speak of “non-carbon” energy, we are referring to an incontrovertible fact. Denialists are contradicted every time we speak of the need for “non-carbon”.
However while we continue to speak of “renewables” we are ourselves exposed to instant contradiction by anyone with access to a geologist. The world isn’t running out of non-renewables, it never was. What we are running out of is somewhere to put our wastes, the most copious and dangerous of which is burnt carbon.
If, when using the word “renewables”, you mean non-carbon, say so. If you mean wind and solar, say so. If you mean nuclear, wind and solar, say so. If you mean every possible energy source that doesn’t use carbon, just say “non-carbon”.
Roger the essential element in “renewables” is sustainability and that is also the essence of the economic/moral/environmental arguments against fossil fuels. Carbon is bountiful but benign if not floating in the atmosphere in ever increasing quantities, hence the need to live within a footprint that could go on in perpetuity. The only thing perpetual about an expanded nuclear industry would be the increased risk of accidental or deliberate release of toxic radiation.
@ Mike W — Yes, say it! “Sustainable energy” would say exactly what this crowded world needs. However the term precludes any further use of carbon, including gas.
Wind or solar salesmen would quickly shout you down, because both wind and solar need copious supplies of gas for backup. Yet any level of carbon release is toxic to the greenhouse.
No one was killed by nuclear energy in Japan despite the hysteria, but their reversion to carbon means the wounded greenhouse will be less benign.
I’d be happy for high priced gas to be edged out of the market, as with suitable batteries behind the meter and offstream pumped hydro for the grid, it can be phased out. We should then be able to reduce our footprint to a sustainable one, so that difficult to eliminate CO2 and methane release (ie cement, rotting vegetation and animal production) can be accommodated. Contrary to your statement, it is the solar and wind salesmen that are knocking on my door re pumped hydro.
Assuming of course that you aren’t* one of said denialists (of the sort who pens “we aren’t denying anything” articles)…
Glossing over your belief that running out of fossil fuels (and other things that can’t be replenished) isn’t a thing (and you accuse the rest of us of inviting ridicule); I’ll try not to smack you around the head with the fact that fission plants would have about a generations’ supply of fuel if they ever became a staple. Or that the US has oil reserves (discovered and otherwise) amounting to about 3yrs supply if Canada turns the spigot off.
I’ll just casually mention that the quickest way to be ridiculed, is to treat denialists’ conspiracy theories as being worth the precious oxygen they expended bleating them.
If you want bonus points for emulating the beautiful winged quacking persons in seated posture, try ENGAGING their coke-fuelled twattery, and letting them set the terms of the discourse.
*(you didn’t think we’d recognise a CFACT press release or a “Climate Hustle” bumper? At the same time the film’s getting promoted?)
Renewables is the right word. Coal and gas, uranium and other stuff that has to be dug out of the ground at vast expense and pollution will run out, it’s not being renewed.
The sun, wind and waves are free, endless, don’t need replenishment and don’t need expensive polluting digging up.
Uhh Roger, you wrote “What we are running out of is somewhere to put our wastes”.
Shall we store the waste from your beloved nukes in your backyard ?
You could bathe in the afterglow of your favourite power source… win-win eh?
Revelations galore here especially renewables being responsible for drowning children.
It appears the rise in renewable energy’s popularity is directly inverse to LNP common sense.
Another sad thing about all this is that not only do we pay for the wages of these cretins, but some of us vote for them – in the hope that they’re right?
Well, some of us most definitely don’t vote for them. Let’s hope enough of us boot them out asap. Meanwhile, please Qld. wake up to yourselves and get rid of Jolene Henderson and Malfeasance Robot.
How long will this twit remain as chair of environment and energy committee? Looks like group action of the states might get energy policy out of the hands of federal ditherers.
As long as it takes them to realise that you can drape a coat over said chair and be none the wiser… until then, it’s got to have someones bum in it, and Kelly has a bum, so it stays.
Of course Kelly illustrates again as if that were necessary that to be a member of the LNP you need to be a pathological liar with no shame regarding abject hypocrisy.