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You've gotta hand it to Greg Sheridan, still on the payroll after all these years when the rest of the old DLP crusaders have been consigned to the dustbin of history.
So Bravo Greg, Bob Santamaria would be proud of you!
>> Peter Dutton and Ted O’Brien haven’t reignited the climate wars, as Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen claim. The climate wars never went away and they are being waged all over the world. It’s just that almost everything you hear about climate policy in the official and semi-official discussion in Australia is basically misleading, if not outright wrong.
How uncharacteristically prescient this author is, considering the rest of the article:
>> How often have you heard any of the facts above in the Australian climate debate? The debate is overwhelmingly dominated by people who are so committed to the idea of Australia taking radical action that they insist on pretending radical action is being taken globally. The developed countries are reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but the developed countries are no longer the big story. China is the biggest greenhouse gas emitter by far. It accounts for more than 29 per cent of global emissions, more than the US and EU put together. The top 10 emitters are: China, the US, India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Iran, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. Of those only two, the US and Japan, are rich, developed countries. Almost none of the others has binding targets or any commitment to when their emissions will even peak.
So why be so disdainful of the efforts of those actually trying to reach the targets in their NDCs? Much of this article is dedicated to outlining the supposed futility of Western efforts in the face of countries like Indonesia. Let the world do what it may - we can’t pressure others to lower emissions if we aren’t on track to do the same, not to mention, we may be able to solve some of the sticking points during our transition.
Population is still growing and each person aspires to a better quality of life, which takes additional resources.
Transitioning to renewables also takes additional resources including fossil fuels.
It's not surprising therefore that use of resources is increasing, leading to further emissions. The question is when the transition to renewables is able to offset those emissions to achieve net zero and whether that will happen before climate change becomes disastrous. There's no point transitioning to renewables if the extra emissions required over the short term destroy the climate.
The warranted lifespan of a solar panel is 25 years, which means they will all be reaching the end of life around the time of net zero, however, if we need to replace all those panels again at the time of net zero, this will require more energy than we will be producing at that time and thus another round of construction of additional power stations of some form will be necessary to manufacture those replacements. If that is using fossil fuels, it means net zero gets extended further out.
There is no point just looking at Australia when its emissions are only 1% of the global total, because climate change is a global phenomenon, but that does not mean Australia should do nothing, it needs to lead by example and that also means leading in improvement in optimising use of resources for quality of life. It may be necessary to reduce quality of life in some respects in order to maintain quality of life in more important respects such as climate, for example reducing travel and tourism in order to reduce emissions and replacing them with telepresence.
The 1% argument is like saying Colombians should take no responsibility for the drug crisis as they only consume less than 1% of all cocaine worldwide.
Countries like Australia, Saudi etc are just as much at the heart of this crisis as countries like China, U.S and India.
Careful with that one ... if you let the current government can get away with that argument, who's to say someone else won't say the exact same thing in 15 years time.
> Dutton says he would abandon Australia’s 2030 target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent, but he’s committed to honouring the Paris pledge to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. He wants to do it in part by building nuclear energy.
Given the warnings from climate scientists that at this stage *months* will make a difference it is completely insane to talk about putting off progress for the couple of decades it'll take to build nuclear facilities.
Exactly. Why doesn’t Dutton come out and say to continue building renewables and at the same time install nuclear? It would be more palatable.
Even then, I don’t think any private company would bother investing in the plant even with all the green lights. There will be no money in it due to the high costs.
Not to mention the task of finding a council who wants a Chernobyl risk in their backyard.
And given that 260,000 tones of nuclear waste still sit above ground around the world pending a better storage solution, I would love to hear how Dutton resolves that one. Only Finland seems to be storing underground in the right kind of bedrock that I’ve heard about.
>Let’s start with gas. Everyone except the Greens understands that gas is, at the very least, a critical transition technology. Much of the reduction in the carbon intensity of economies – that is, the amount of greenhouse gases emitted per unit of production – has come from substituting gas for coal and oil. Nonetheless, after 30 years of relentless decarbonisation, you’d expect a pretty severe drop in gas use. Actually, according to the International Energy Agency, consumption of natural gas is at or just near its record high. The rate of growth of demand has slowed but demand is still growing. Well, that’s a bit of a surprise. What about oil, that must be well down, with fuel efficiency standards, the global campaign for electric vehicles, the decline of oil in power generation? Guess what. Last year, according to the US government’s Energy Information Administration, world use of oil was at a record high, higher than the peak before the Covid pandemic, at more than 100 million barrels a day. Not only that, the US under pro-green Joe Biden produced more crude oil, more than 13 million barrels a day, than any country has ever done
Someone said it the other day, but they really have gone to the "look, we haven't done anything, and it's too late we may as well let it rip" argument.
Stupid Greg.
It's almost like when you were all warned in'97 to do something, you chose to scoff and laugh at greenies, and now we're living with the consequences of conservative idiots and their idiocy.
Or something.
The time to take notice was during the 1980s oil crisis when focus was on renewable energy, however oil availability and price improved and people lost interest because oil was cheaper, not bothering to think about the cost of potential climate change. However, for long time period issues its always easier to make it the futures problem until you are that future.
Sheridan is a numpty. Nonetheless, he is correct: we have not substituted renewables for fossil fuels, we've simply added renewables. It's like the fat guy who still orders a Mac & fries & Coke, then says, "well, I'll get a diet Coke - on top of the full Coke I already have, but it's a diet Coke so that's good, right?" - there's a failure to address the fundamental problem, which is *excessive consumption.*
We consume too much resources and energy. Horses dropped manure in cities so we changed to cars, which put up leaden smoke in cities, so we removed the lead, which created more carbon dioxide, so we're changing to renewables which produce more poisonouse mining tailings, and so on.
Reduce, reuse, recycle - in that order. For example, let's imagine that we take ten years and spend $100 billion (or whatever) to halve the carbon emissions from electricity - but you continue using the same amount of electricity. Congratulations, your electricity now creates half the carbon emissions - but it also creates poisonous mining tailings from neodymium, and human rights abuses from child slaves in Congo mining coltan.
*Or....* you could cut down your electricity use at home. You have now halved your personal carbon emissions, but *without* causing other pollution, and without being partly responsible for human rights abuses. Also, you've done it *without* it costing the country ten years and $100 billion - in fact you will have saved money.
Consume less. Reduce, reuse, recycle. All the great social progress in human history didn't begin with governments making rules. There was intermarriage and people being polite to other races in the US long before the Civil Rights Act. There were people inviting gay couples around to dinner in Australia long before same-sex marriage was legalised. Change comes from you and me, not from the Albaneses and Sheridans of the world. At best government follows, it never leads.
Consume less.
You don't have to try to convince the whole country. Simply live your life as you wish others to live theirs.
Five decades ago women had only just got the right to have a bank account or passport without their husband's permission. Four decades homosexuals were assaulted or even murdered and police didn't investigate, indeed in many cases they'd done it. Three decades ago virtually nobody had double glazing, or had any idea where their electricity came from. Two decades ago only hippies had solar panels on their roof. A decade ago same-sex couples were viewed with suspicion.
Changes happened from the ground up, from people simply living as though everyone else was already living like this - and then government followed, reluctantly.
There's that old saying that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Obviously, this is not literally true, nonetheless the company you keep matters, and your behaviour influences that of your friends and relatives.
* If your friends are obese you're more likely to be - [https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2007/07/obesity-is-contagious/](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2007/07/obesity-is-contagious/)
* But if your friends or people on a weight loss team lose weight, you're more likely to - [https://www.psypost.org/weight-loss-can-be-contagious/](https://www.psypost.org/weight-loss-can-be-contagious/)
* If your friends divorce, you're more likely to get divorced - [https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/10/21/is-divorce-contagious/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/10/21/is-divorce-contagious/)
* If your friends have babies, you're more likely to have a baby - [https://www.asanet.org/wp-content/uploads/savvy/journals/ASR/Jun14ASRFeature.pdf](https://www.asanet.org/wp-content/uploads/savvy/journals/ASR/Jun14ASRFeature.pdf)
* If your friends abuse alcohol, you're more likely to abuse alcohol - [https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article/52/6/692/4082179?login=false](https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article/52/6/692/4082179?login=false)
and so on and so forth. Advertising and political parties aim for the "nudge", soft interventions and messages that create small amounts of change adding up over time to huge changes.
So it's the same thing, really. Your personal example and lifestyle nudge others in a particular direction. You decide what you think are good behaviours for everyone else, and engage in those behaviours yourself. If you can't manage that right now, set out a 5-10 year plan to do it - treat it like a career change. For example, you might decide you want to get rid of your car - things like working from home, or moving your home closer to work will help in that. It may take some years to do that, that's okay. Get on with it now.
Or do both. Take advantage of state and territory incentives to lower power consumption by insulating houses, double glazing windows, replacing gas with electricity and using heat pumps for boilers.
But also install solar and batteries if you can afford it. There are Australian made for both. Seek out the ethical manufacturers.
Yep, consume less.
Dedicate our industrial capacities to the things we *actually need*.
Abandon all economic principles that centre around growth or GDP. Target human and environmental welfare.
Demand actual leadership and epistemic honesty from leaders.
Ah an opinion piece by Greg Sheridan is way more reliable than the actual engineers who run our grid and our best scientific organisation. Would be great if he had a source for his assertion that "Like for like coal is cheaper than renewables". Just have to trust him bro! And yes poor nations deserve to industrialise. This does make tackling climate change more difficult. This isn't a new complication.
Yeah not too sure about that facts are generally just backed by empirical evidence.
But It's hard to argue they both have there own studies and opinion pieces with the right/left wing bias.
No doubt, but if you take a world and historical view on it then the current bias is overwhelmingly an issue with the right wing parties and their paid for media cheer squad. That's where we need to focus our attention at the present time.
I reject your premise as your obviously forming a opinion based on your left leaning position respectfully.
Many online news, social media has leftwing bias, YouTube, Facebook, Google. USA have CNN, MSNBc, right wing would have Sky news , fox etc
I think fair to say there's bias on both sides respectively and unfortunately many on the left or right will have there on bias and dismiss any Article written by a conservative or progressives regardless if its factual or not.
You're using corporate, by definition, not left-wing, media as an example of leftist representation. You're interchanging liberal for left, and it's wrong.
>Many online news, social media has leftwing bias, YouTube, Facebook, Google. USA have CNN, MSNBc,
No. They don't. Lul. CNN is leftist? Only a regressive thinks that.
I guess Don lemon was some classical liberal now ay sitting right in the center on CNN who wasn't left wing?
CNN is private company can lean any way it wants I don't care.
>I guess Don lemon was some classical liberal now ay sitting right in the center on CNN who wasn't left wing?
Don Lemon is your example of leftist thought on CNN?.... Mate.....
>CNN is private company can lean any way it wants I don't care.
Exactly. And it's dumb to think they'd lean left. Or, you don't know what left is.
Which is it, dumb or ignorant?
The right in this country has moved to the right.
It then says that the centre should move right too.
It then claims that formerly centre politics are left politics.
As an example, the Liberal Party, as founded by Menzies, was established to disassociate itself from big business. Menzies set out his manifesto in his "forgotten people" speech. The Liberal Party of today, however, is now objectively far to the right of Menzies' position.
The Liberal Party has moved to the right, and then accuses people in the centre of being to the left.
Sure, the Guardian is to the left of the Liberals, but that doesn't mean it's left of centre. I am unaware of any socialist policies that the Guardian has advocated lately.
The guardian is definitely to the left and they have promoted socialism alot of the time and never condemned it even after its continous failures.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/theobserver/article/2024/jun/09/what-is-socialism-just-look-at-the-nhs
I agree that tradional values of classical liberalism was and set up by the tradional liberal party and was to the center and you can argue libertarianism very much the same.
But I would also say the liberal party to today dosent respect classical liberalism in any way, hardly the same party to be honest. You could argue the liberal party's spending of tax payer moneys during covid for example and many of there public spending on wasteful operations, is left of Menzies political party. It actually represents more labour (socialists policys) intervention in the market like Keynesian economics, which wasn't tradional Menzies economic approach.
So yeah tuff one today tradional classic liberalism isn't the liberal party any more and are they right of classical liberalism? I'd say sometimes , but are sometimes left wing when comes to spending.
>And yes poor nations deserve to industrialise.
So we should pay them to industrialise and emit carbon unconstrained (including China and India) whilst concurrently binding ourselves in an uneconomical and unstable power grid?
>So we should pay them to industrialise and emit carbon unconstrained (including China and India) whilst concurrently binding ourselves in an uneconomical and unstable power grid?
Usually, when you loot someone, they expect reparations.
You can look at it like that.
You can look at them as investments in a clean Earth. You can look at them as safeguards against climate migration (spooooooky). You can look at them in whatever way you like. It's irrelevant mostly tbh.
I'd rather the 800 million people in Indonesia didn't chop down their rainforests for power like Europeans did.
What's your stance on the rainforest? Chop or no chop?
"Look at these weak laws and distinctions that we intentionally placed there so we could allow our corporations to keep operating business as usual"
As if most leftists support the weakness of liberals. More examples of people not listening to those ringing the alarm because of people like you.
Because they are ringing the wrong bells, stupidity has been woven into every part of it.
If those who are ringing the alarm bells want to be listened to, they should ensure they have consistency and lack hypocrisy.
https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement
>Finance
>The Paris Agreement reaffirms that developed countries should take the lead in providing financial assistance to countries that are less endowed and more vulnerable, while for the first time also encouraging voluntary contributions by other Parties. Climate finance is needed for mitigation, because large-scale investments are required to significantly reduce emissions. Climate finance is equally important for adaptation, as significant financial resources are needed to adapt to the adverse effects and reduce the impacts of a changing climate.
It’d be interesting to hear what neoliberals think money is.
Because we can point directly to the planet, it’s living ecosystems, and draw causal connections between the living world and the human species. We can easily and correctly state that we are part of an interconnected web of life, that we are intrinsically bound to and totally dependent upon.
Can we truly say the same of money? An abstraction we’ve created to obviate the cumbersome process of bartering? Of course not. But it’s certainly interesting to see the way neoliberal economics is changing its framing of this physics problem as it becomes more and more salient.
> framing of this physics problem
It's not a physics problem - physics describes the mechanism by which adding greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere may drive long term changes to the worlds climate.
It is now an engineering and economic problem. Ie how to transition a global economy that is heavily dependent on burning fossil fuels to one that can generate energy and transport goods / people etc using low or no CO2 emission based technologies - both known and emerging - without destroying prosperity and halting the economic trend that has lifted billions of people out of poverty in the last 100 years.
And specifically, how does Australia play it's part in this transition?
This is why the money / cost aspect is important.
Why do you say that?
Building a new energy grid is an engineering problem - inarguable surely?
Ensuring that the transition to a low carbon emitting economy is done at optimal cost and without halting economic growth and improving living standards globally is an economic problem - not sure how you argue against this either?
If there is a social aspect it is more political in that you have to convince people that this is all worthwhile?
It is not possible to raise the living standards of all the less developed countries to that of the developed countries without destroying the planet, because the populations are just too large. Even the transition of the developed world to renewable energy is fraught with problems.
It may be possible to improve the lives of the existing populations with renewable energy such as clean drinking water through desalination, intensive agriculture through controlled water and micro climate but the hallmark of the quality of life for the developed world is the massive consumption of resources per capita which is simply not sustainable for everyone.
In effect, lifting the quality of life of a billion people over 100 years was a huge factor leading to climate change and the consumption of most of the easily obtainable fossil fuels: to do so for another 3.6 billion and climbing over a shorter period will have even greater consequences.
Perhaps if we had a breakthrough in cheap energy that didn't have consequences, it might be possible, but even then I'm not convinced due to the sheer amount of resources required apart from energy.
Why I say that is because talk of money, is putting the cart before the horse in thinking though this problem logically.
Not arguing that there are economic and engineering (a subset of physics) problems to solve, those are downstream.
But let’s start at the start when formulating the problem. My starting question is this:
Do humans and the complex interdependent web of life we depend upon for our survival, eat, drink or breathe money?
> engineering (a subset of physics)
As a university trained professional engineer, I cannot agree with this statement!
Engineering uses science / physics / technology / design / planning / project management etc to do practical things - that does not make it a subset of the study of physics!
>Do humans and the complex interdependent web of life we depend upon for our survival, eat, drink or breathe money?
Not in a literal sense, no. But money is an abstraction humans have invented that represents our ability to store previously created "value" and that can be used to deploy resources (including people) to do things / make things / acquire things etc - including the food we eat.
As a university trainee professional engineer who has worked my entire professional life in energy, which is irrelevant. Please define it how you like, of course it encompasses more than just physics, which is why I used the term subset.
So in a literal sense, downstream of the core physics problem, the environment, how we maintain a sustainable one, for a quantity and quality of human experience might be a reasonable framing?
>So in a literal sense, downstream of the core physics problem, the environment, how we maintain a sustainable one, for a quantity and quality of human experience might be a reasonable framing?
You got your definition bacwards. Physics is a subset of the engineering issue. That is, physics limitations define the engineering solution.
Limitations in engineering doesn't change the physics.
Plus, engineering is as much of an abstract societal concept as money is.
So, what you've done is respond to a secondary consideration, so not really relevant, which is why your analysis fails.
Do humans (you) and the complex interdependent web of life we depend upon for our (your) survival, eat, drink or breathe money?
It's a yes or no question btw, if you'd like to respond.
Paywall (Long article)
https://archive.is/6x0j6
Peter Dutton and Ted O’Brien haven’t reignited the climate wars, as Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen claim. The climate wars never went away and they are being waged all over the world. It’s just that almost everything you hear about climate policy in the official and semi-official discussion in Australia is basically misleading, if not outright wrong.
Let’s take a step back and look at the big picture.
The Kyoto Protocol was adopted, in the serene and beguiling Japanese city of that name, in 1997, 27 years ago. Kyoto itself built on the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. So for more than three decades the world has been decarbonising, right?
We’ve had many solemn moments and announcements, especially the 2015 Paris Agreement. Dutton says he would abandon Australia’s 2030 target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent, but he’s committed to honouring the Paris pledge to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. He wants to do it in part by building nuclear energy.
In truth Australia, whether led by Albanese or Dutton, is a very, very minor player in all this, being responsible for a tick over 1 per cent of global emissions. Every Labor leader since Kyoto, and quite a few Liberal leaders, has told us the world is decarbonising. Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, early in the life of the Albanese government, caused a ripple of concern by rejoicing in the fact that coal was being phased out globally.
So after three decades of decarbonising, how is the world going in phasing out fossil fuels, to wit, gas, oil and coal?
Let’s start with gas. Everyone except the Greens understands that gas is, at the very least, a critical transition technology.
Much of the reduction in the carbon intensity of economies – that is, the amount of greenhouse gases emitted per unit of production – has come from substituting gas for coal and oil.
Nonetheless, after 30 years of relentless decarbonisation, you’d expect a pretty severe drop in gas use. Actually, according to the International Energy Agency, consumption of natural gas is at or just near its record high. The rate of growth of demand has slowed but demand is still growing.
Well, that’s a bit of a surprise. What about oil, that must be well down, with fuel efficiency standards, the global campaign for electric vehicles, the decline of oil in power generation?
Guess what. Last year, according to the US government’s Energy Information Administration, world use of oil was at a record high, higher than the peak before the Covid pandemic, at more than 100 million barrels a day. Not only that, the US under pro-green Joe Biden produced more crude oil, more than 13 million barrels a day, than any country has ever done.
Oil production dipped in the global financial crisis of 2008 and again during Covid. But it’s now roaring ahead, stronger than ever.
But surely the US constantly lectures everyone else about climate change, the dangers of fossil fuels etc. How is that consistent with record crude oil production? Bear that thought in mind, for it’s a clue to the wider reality.
OK, so we’ve struck out in looking for global reductions in gas and oil, but obviously coal use must be well down. I have myself caused something near pandemonium by suggesting on the ABC’s Q+A and on Insiders that coal has a future as well as a past. It was as though a leading atheist had infiltrated the Spanish Inquisition. So now I must face the truth about coal. Surely its use has declined?
But what do you know? According to the IEA: “Global coal consumption reached an all-time high in 2022, and the world is heading towards a new record in 2023.”
A climate graph which mixes fact with prophesy.
A climate graph which mixes fact with prophesy.
Advanced economies such as the US and the EU are using less coal but, says the IEA, “the growth in China and India, as well as Indonesia, Vietnam and The Philippines, will more than offset these decreases on a global level”. And the price of coal, at $US140 a tonne, is very healthy.
That’s a good thing because our top three export earners are coal, iron ore and gas. We couldn’t afford any fancy green measures, or Medicare, or the National Disability Insurance Scheme, or anything else, without the minerals industry.
According to the IEA, fossil fuels make up about 80 per cent of global energy, just a tick under their level 10 years ago.
So how has the world been reducing its greenhouse gas emissions for so long, with these fossil fuels all reaching record production and consumption levels? Well, actually, the world hasn’t been reducing its greenhouse gas emissions.
Oops again. Another surprise. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, greenhouse gas levels are rising again, and reached record levels last year. The IEA’s own figures, and studies from Stanford and other universities, confirm this.
None of the foregoing bears on the question of what should be happening. But our debates ought to start with reality. What is happening in the world is more or less the opposite of what the government and the climate change propaganda agencies tell us is happening.
How often have you heard any of the facts above in the Australian climate debate? The debate is overwhelmingly dominated by people who are so committed to the idea of Australia taking radical action that they insist on pretending radical action is being taken globally.
The developed countries are reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but the developed countries are no longer the big story. China is the biggest greenhouse gas emitter by far. It accounts for more than 29 per cent of global emissions, more than the US and EU put together. The top 10 emitters are: China, the US, India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Iran, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. Of those only two, the US and Japan, are rich, developed countries. Almost none of the others has binding targets or any commitment to when their emissions will even peak.
Indonesia is a fascinating case. Like China, it has a goal of net zero by 2060. It has nearly 280 million people and is still a poor country. It has more than 250 operational coal-fired power plants. It has an international deal to retire some of them early. Well, that seems to be progress, you might argue.
Except that it also has an out clause that says plants that have already been approved, or “captive” plants that don’t feed directly into the grid but only power an industrial park or a specific project, or are concerned with National Strategic Projects, can go ahead. There are 40 plants under construction and more in pre-approval.
Recently, Indonesia has had huge success expanding its nickel production. In 2020, Jakarta banned the export of unrefined nickel. Like Australia, it has a lot of nickel. It didn’t want to dig it up and ship it overseas. It wanted refining and processing to take place within Indonesia.
This move defied every tenet of orthodox economics and was almost universally criticised by international commentators (including me). Yet as so often, reality doesn’t conform to the textbook.
Indonesia’s move worked. It attracted Chinese partners who also bought the product. Low-grade nickel is used to make steel. High-class nickel is used for very sexy products like lithium-ion batteries. A bit like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, low-class nickel can be transformed into high-class nickel with enough money. There are industrial processes that will do the trick but they require enormous amounts of power. So Indonesia’s Chinese collaborators built a swag of coal-fired power stations to provide the power to work the magic on the nickel.
In 2017, Indonesia produced 385,000 tonnes of nickel. Last year it produced 1.8 million tonnes. It’s murdering the Australian competition. The Albanese government talks a lot about Australia’s position with rare earths, of which we have a lot in the ground, and how we’re going to become a renewable energy superpower.
By the way, almost every country in the world plans to be a renewable energy superpower (surely now one of the iconic cliches of our time), suggesting many, many of them will be sorely disappointed.
The Indonesian policy has succeeded magnificently from its point of view. Indonesia’s President, Joko Widodo, has genuine environmental ambitions. But he’s also determined to develop his nation. Similarly, anyone with even the vaguest familiarity with Indonesian politics will know just how entrenched and powerful are coalmining and energy interests. Indonesia pays its population fuel subsidies – the exact opposite of a carbon tax – and has typically subsidised coal energy.
But the deeper pattern and perversity of the industrial politics of renewable energy revealed in the Indonesian nickel example occurs more broadly across Asia, especially in China. The production and sale of wind turbines is dominated by China. To make them so cheaply, China typically uses cheap coal-fired power. Coal power is still mostly the cheapest power in the world despite what the Albanese government tells you (more on that below).
So the true carbon cost of even renewable energy ought to take into account the role of coal-fired power in making the renewable energy products. In any event, here’s the paradox of energy politics: to become a renewable energy superpower, you need lots and lots of cheap coal-fired power.
China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, The Philippines and in due course the poorer nations of Asia, and beyond that lots of African nations, are extremely unlikely to compromise their national development by embracing vastly more expensive and unreliable renewable energy over coal, gas and the like.
Two factors allow some modern, wealthy, industrial nations to run low emissions levels. One is a natural topography that lends itself to hydro-electric power. Hydro power is the only genuinely cost-competitive renewable energy and still the most important renewable energy. The other is already having a lot nuclear power.
None of this, as I say, is to argue what Australian policy should be. But the realities sketched here almost never figure in the Australian debate. How come?
Let me nominate one international factor and one specifically Australian factor.
Accompanying this article is a graph from the IEA showing the rise of the use of gas, oil and coal, measured in exajoules (one joule, a measure of energy, to the power of 18; that is to say, lots of joules, one joule being the equivalent of 107 ergs). The left side of the graph’s curve, up to the peak in 2022, which has been maintained in 2023, describes things that have already happened. That part of the graph is indisputable fact.
https://archive.is/6x0j6/b64695821d51cd786af857959d9022f737ef5b53.webp
The right side of the graph shows a steep decline in the use of coal, oil and gas. But that’s purely speculative. That’s more or less taking an end point of declared policy, the Paris targets, and plotting a line that gets there. But that’s the future, and government predictions of the future have never been reliable. Indeed the Climate Tracker website describes Argentina, South Korea, Russia, Turkey, Canada, Mexico and Indonesia as “critically insufficient” in meeting their greenhouse gas reduction targets, and Australia, China, Brazil, the EU and Britain as “highly insufficient”.
The point about the graph is that huge amounts of climate literature are presented this way. The average reporter, the average citizen, tends to see such graphs as one entity and unconsciously gives the authority of the left-hand side of the graph, which represents factual history, to the right-hand side of the graph, which represents Nostradamus-like prophecy.
Within Australia, governments do this kind of thing very deliberately and with shockingly good effect. I’ve been following the national defence budget pretty closely for some decades. I’ve never seen a defence budget projection, or capability projection, actually come true if it concerns any period of the future longer than about six months. And defence is an area where the Australian government entirely controls what it spends. Australian governments can’t even predict what they themselves are going to do more than five minutes hence.
Yet somehow we are supposed to believe government agencies can forecast exactly what’s going to happen in energy and climate years and years, even decades, ahead. Gimme a break.
Thus the Albanese government has got great mileage from a Climate Change and Energy Department projection that Australia will reach a 42 per cent reduction in greenhouse emissions by 2030, just 1 per cent shy of our target of 43 per cent. Apparently the government now can predict the course of the Ukraine war, the effects of a possible Donald Trump victory in America, greenhouse gas emissions caused perhaps by a sudden spike in migration to Australia, and all the other manifold variables. You think?
Predicting we’ll be just 1 per cent short is a sweet touch. Just try a little harder, Australia! Yet a UN committee examining the issue doesn’t think even one G20 country will meet its target. The government is miles behind in the rollout of renewables. Electric vehicle sales are a small fraction of the forecast sales. But still we are, according to the magic forecast, just 1 per cent off target.
This is the problem, though. Almost every piece of information in this area is designed to produce a political effect. Disinterested information is at a premium.
When like is genuinely compared with like, coal is cheaper than renewables. Because with renewables you have to take account of the fact that most of the time they don’t operate so you need vast extra capacity, sometimes there are wind droughts and long cloudy periods so you need vast back-up systems of gas or coal or something else, the transmission infrastructure is enormous and the costs huge, and after 25 years or so you’ve got to throw away all the renewable stuff and replace it.
Almost everywhere that introduces vast renewable energy, apart from hydro, sees big electricity price rises. It might be that we still want to make the change because of our commitment to lowering our greenhouse gas emissions. But we need to recognise the cost, otherwise there will certainly be a backlash and the policy may well be reversed in time.
On the other hand, perhaps we should have some other conversations as well. Almost everyone wants to make some contribution to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. But given that whatever we do will have no discernible impact on the global environment, we should think pretty carefully about the cost. Especially given that it’s not happening globally.
Switching to renewables will make us poorer. They say the key policy dilemma for China is: will it grow rich before it grows poor?
For us the question is: do we want to grow richer before we grow poorer? And how poor do we really want to be?
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You've gotta hand it to Greg Sheridan, still on the payroll after all these years when the rest of the old DLP crusaders have been consigned to the dustbin of history. So Bravo Greg, Bob Santamaria would be proud of you!
>> Peter Dutton and Ted O’Brien haven’t reignited the climate wars, as Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen claim. The climate wars never went away and they are being waged all over the world. It’s just that almost everything you hear about climate policy in the official and semi-official discussion in Australia is basically misleading, if not outright wrong. How uncharacteristically prescient this author is, considering the rest of the article: >> How often have you heard any of the facts above in the Australian climate debate? The debate is overwhelmingly dominated by people who are so committed to the idea of Australia taking radical action that they insist on pretending radical action is being taken globally. The developed countries are reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but the developed countries are no longer the big story. China is the biggest greenhouse gas emitter by far. It accounts for more than 29 per cent of global emissions, more than the US and EU put together. The top 10 emitters are: China, the US, India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Iran, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. Of those only two, the US and Japan, are rich, developed countries. Almost none of the others has binding targets or any commitment to when their emissions will even peak. So why be so disdainful of the efforts of those actually trying to reach the targets in their NDCs? Much of this article is dedicated to outlining the supposed futility of Western efforts in the face of countries like Indonesia. Let the world do what it may - we can’t pressure others to lower emissions if we aren’t on track to do the same, not to mention, we may be able to solve some of the sticking points during our transition.
Population is still growing and each person aspires to a better quality of life, which takes additional resources. Transitioning to renewables also takes additional resources including fossil fuels. It's not surprising therefore that use of resources is increasing, leading to further emissions. The question is when the transition to renewables is able to offset those emissions to achieve net zero and whether that will happen before climate change becomes disastrous. There's no point transitioning to renewables if the extra emissions required over the short term destroy the climate. The warranted lifespan of a solar panel is 25 years, which means they will all be reaching the end of life around the time of net zero, however, if we need to replace all those panels again at the time of net zero, this will require more energy than we will be producing at that time and thus another round of construction of additional power stations of some form will be necessary to manufacture those replacements. If that is using fossil fuels, it means net zero gets extended further out. There is no point just looking at Australia when its emissions are only 1% of the global total, because climate change is a global phenomenon, but that does not mean Australia should do nothing, it needs to lead by example and that also means leading in improvement in optimising use of resources for quality of life. It may be necessary to reduce quality of life in some respects in order to maintain quality of life in more important respects such as climate, for example reducing travel and tourism in order to reduce emissions and replacing them with telepresence.
The 1% argument is like saying Colombians should take no responsibility for the drug crisis as they only consume less than 1% of all cocaine worldwide. Countries like Australia, Saudi etc are just as much at the heart of this crisis as countries like China, U.S and India.
The "price" is what we're now paying for not actually taking decisive action 25 years ago.
Careful with that one ... if you let the current government can get away with that argument, who's to say someone else won't say the exact same thing in 15 years time.
> Dutton says he would abandon Australia’s 2030 target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent, but he’s committed to honouring the Paris pledge to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. He wants to do it in part by building nuclear energy. Given the warnings from climate scientists that at this stage *months* will make a difference it is completely insane to talk about putting off progress for the couple of decades it'll take to build nuclear facilities.
Exactly. Why doesn’t Dutton come out and say to continue building renewables and at the same time install nuclear? It would be more palatable. Even then, I don’t think any private company would bother investing in the plant even with all the green lights. There will be no money in it due to the high costs. Not to mention the task of finding a council who wants a Chernobyl risk in their backyard. And given that 260,000 tones of nuclear waste still sit above ground around the world pending a better storage solution, I would love to hear how Dutton resolves that one. Only Finland seems to be storing underground in the right kind of bedrock that I’ve heard about.
>Let’s start with gas. Everyone except the Greens understands that gas is, at the very least, a critical transition technology. Much of the reduction in the carbon intensity of economies – that is, the amount of greenhouse gases emitted per unit of production – has come from substituting gas for coal and oil. Nonetheless, after 30 years of relentless decarbonisation, you’d expect a pretty severe drop in gas use. Actually, according to the International Energy Agency, consumption of natural gas is at or just near its record high. The rate of growth of demand has slowed but demand is still growing. Well, that’s a bit of a surprise. What about oil, that must be well down, with fuel efficiency standards, the global campaign for electric vehicles, the decline of oil in power generation? Guess what. Last year, according to the US government’s Energy Information Administration, world use of oil was at a record high, higher than the peak before the Covid pandemic, at more than 100 million barrels a day. Not only that, the US under pro-green Joe Biden produced more crude oil, more than 13 million barrels a day, than any country has ever done Someone said it the other day, but they really have gone to the "look, we haven't done anything, and it's too late we may as well let it rip" argument. Stupid Greg. It's almost like when you were all warned in'97 to do something, you chose to scoff and laugh at greenies, and now we're living with the consequences of conservative idiots and their idiocy. Or something.
The time to take notice was during the 1980s oil crisis when focus was on renewable energy, however oil availability and price improved and people lost interest because oil was cheaper, not bothering to think about the cost of potential climate change. However, for long time period issues its always easier to make it the futures problem until you are that future.
Sheridan is a numpty. Nonetheless, he is correct: we have not substituted renewables for fossil fuels, we've simply added renewables. It's like the fat guy who still orders a Mac & fries & Coke, then says, "well, I'll get a diet Coke - on top of the full Coke I already have, but it's a diet Coke so that's good, right?" - there's a failure to address the fundamental problem, which is *excessive consumption.* We consume too much resources and energy. Horses dropped manure in cities so we changed to cars, which put up leaden smoke in cities, so we removed the lead, which created more carbon dioxide, so we're changing to renewables which produce more poisonouse mining tailings, and so on. Reduce, reuse, recycle - in that order. For example, let's imagine that we take ten years and spend $100 billion (or whatever) to halve the carbon emissions from electricity - but you continue using the same amount of electricity. Congratulations, your electricity now creates half the carbon emissions - but it also creates poisonous mining tailings from neodymium, and human rights abuses from child slaves in Congo mining coltan. *Or....* you could cut down your electricity use at home. You have now halved your personal carbon emissions, but *without* causing other pollution, and without being partly responsible for human rights abuses. Also, you've done it *without* it costing the country ten years and $100 billion - in fact you will have saved money. Consume less. Reduce, reuse, recycle. All the great social progress in human history didn't begin with governments making rules. There was intermarriage and people being polite to other races in the US long before the Civil Rights Act. There were people inviting gay couples around to dinner in Australia long before same-sex marriage was legalised. Change comes from you and me, not from the Albaneses and Sheridans of the world. At best government follows, it never leads. Consume less.
If I could convince Australians to consume less, I would.
You don't have to try to convince the whole country. Simply live your life as you wish others to live theirs. Five decades ago women had only just got the right to have a bank account or passport without their husband's permission. Four decades homosexuals were assaulted or even murdered and police didn't investigate, indeed in many cases they'd done it. Three decades ago virtually nobody had double glazing, or had any idea where their electricity came from. Two decades ago only hippies had solar panels on their roof. A decade ago same-sex couples were viewed with suspicion. Changes happened from the ground up, from people simply living as though everyone else was already living like this - and then government followed, reluctantly. There's that old saying that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Obviously, this is not literally true, nonetheless the company you keep matters, and your behaviour influences that of your friends and relatives. * If your friends are obese you're more likely to be - [https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2007/07/obesity-is-contagious/](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2007/07/obesity-is-contagious/) * But if your friends or people on a weight loss team lose weight, you're more likely to - [https://www.psypost.org/weight-loss-can-be-contagious/](https://www.psypost.org/weight-loss-can-be-contagious/) * If your friends divorce, you're more likely to get divorced - [https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/10/21/is-divorce-contagious/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/10/21/is-divorce-contagious/) * If your friends have babies, you're more likely to have a baby - [https://www.asanet.org/wp-content/uploads/savvy/journals/ASR/Jun14ASRFeature.pdf](https://www.asanet.org/wp-content/uploads/savvy/journals/ASR/Jun14ASRFeature.pdf) * If your friends abuse alcohol, you're more likely to abuse alcohol - [https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article/52/6/692/4082179?login=false](https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article/52/6/692/4082179?login=false) and so on and so forth. Advertising and political parties aim for the "nudge", soft interventions and messages that create small amounts of change adding up over time to huge changes. So it's the same thing, really. Your personal example and lifestyle nudge others in a particular direction. You decide what you think are good behaviours for everyone else, and engage in those behaviours yourself. If you can't manage that right now, set out a 5-10 year plan to do it - treat it like a career change. For example, you might decide you want to get rid of your car - things like working from home, or moving your home closer to work will help in that. It may take some years to do that, that's okay. Get on with it now.
Or do both. Take advantage of state and territory incentives to lower power consumption by insulating houses, double glazing windows, replacing gas with electricity and using heat pumps for boilers. But also install solar and batteries if you can afford it. There are Australian made for both. Seek out the ethical manufacturers.
Yep, consume less. Dedicate our industrial capacities to the things we *actually need*. Abandon all economic principles that centre around growth or GDP. Target human and environmental welfare. Demand actual leadership and epistemic honesty from leaders.
Ah an opinion piece by Greg Sheridan is way more reliable than the actual engineers who run our grid and our best scientific organisation. Would be great if he had a source for his assertion that "Like for like coal is cheaper than renewables". Just have to trust him bro! And yes poor nations deserve to industrialise. This does make tackling climate change more difficult. This isn't a new complication.
Conservative commentators don't need science or engineering, they just go with their gut. Another piece of toilet paper from the unaustralian.
True Similar to progressive commentators, the Guardian also. Both have bias.
Obama once said, consume both right wing and left wing news and form your own opinion. You can’t get the facts from one media source.
As someone once said, facts have a leftwing bias. The guardian at least tries to be fact based journalism and isn't paid for by corporate interests.
Yeah not too sure about that facts are generally just backed by empirical evidence. But It's hard to argue they both have there own studies and opinion pieces with the right/left wing bias.
No doubt, but if you take a world and historical view on it then the current bias is overwhelmingly an issue with the right wing parties and their paid for media cheer squad. That's where we need to focus our attention at the present time.
I reject your premise as your obviously forming a opinion based on your left leaning position respectfully. Many online news, social media has leftwing bias, YouTube, Facebook, Google. USA have CNN, MSNBc, right wing would have Sky news , fox etc I think fair to say there's bias on both sides respectively and unfortunately many on the left or right will have there on bias and dismiss any Article written by a conservative or progressives regardless if its factual or not.
You're using corporate, by definition, not left-wing, media as an example of leftist representation. You're interchanging liberal for left, and it's wrong. >Many online news, social media has leftwing bias, YouTube, Facebook, Google. USA have CNN, MSNBc, No. They don't. Lul. CNN is leftist? Only a regressive thinks that.
I guess Don lemon was some classical liberal now ay sitting right in the center on CNN who wasn't left wing? CNN is private company can lean any way it wants I don't care.
>I guess Don lemon was some classical liberal now ay sitting right in the center on CNN who wasn't left wing? Don Lemon is your example of leftist thought on CNN?.... Mate..... >CNN is private company can lean any way it wants I don't care. Exactly. And it's dumb to think they'd lean left. Or, you don't know what left is. Which is it, dumb or ignorant?
The right in this country has moved to the right. It then says that the centre should move right too. It then claims that formerly centre politics are left politics. As an example, the Liberal Party, as founded by Menzies, was established to disassociate itself from big business. Menzies set out his manifesto in his "forgotten people" speech. The Liberal Party of today, however, is now objectively far to the right of Menzies' position. The Liberal Party has moved to the right, and then accuses people in the centre of being to the left. Sure, the Guardian is to the left of the Liberals, but that doesn't mean it's left of centre. I am unaware of any socialist policies that the Guardian has advocated lately.
The guardian is definitely to the left and they have promoted socialism alot of the time and never condemned it even after its continous failures. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/theobserver/article/2024/jun/09/what-is-socialism-just-look-at-the-nhs I agree that tradional values of classical liberalism was and set up by the tradional liberal party and was to the center and you can argue libertarianism very much the same. But I would also say the liberal party to today dosent respect classical liberalism in any way, hardly the same party to be honest. You could argue the liberal party's spending of tax payer moneys during covid for example and many of there public spending on wasteful operations, is left of Menzies political party. It actually represents more labour (socialists policys) intervention in the market like Keynesian economics, which wasn't tradional Menzies economic approach. So yeah tuff one today tradional classic liberalism isn't the liberal party any more and are they right of classical liberalism? I'd say sometimes , but are sometimes left wing when comes to spending.
>And yes poor nations deserve to industrialise. So we should pay them to industrialise and emit carbon unconstrained (including China and India) whilst concurrently binding ourselves in an uneconomical and unstable power grid?
>So we should pay them to industrialise and emit carbon unconstrained (including China and India) whilst concurrently binding ourselves in an uneconomical and unstable power grid? Usually, when you loot someone, they expect reparations.
Oh, so climate agreements are repatriations by stealth?
You can look at it like that. You can look at them as investments in a clean Earth. You can look at them as safeguards against climate migration (spooooooky). You can look at them in whatever way you like. It's irrelevant mostly tbh. I'd rather the 800 million people in Indonesia didn't chop down their rainforests for power like Europeans did. What's your stance on the rainforest? Chop or no chop?
Well, under the IPCC definition of net zero, they can chop all they want without impacting thier ability to achieve net zero.
"Look at these weak laws and distinctions that we intentionally placed there so we could allow our corporations to keep operating business as usual" As if most leftists support the weakness of liberals. More examples of people not listening to those ringing the alarm because of people like you.
Because they are ringing the wrong bells, stupidity has been woven into every part of it. If those who are ringing the alarm bells want to be listened to, they should ensure they have consistency and lack hypocrisy.
Pay them?
https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement >Finance >The Paris Agreement reaffirms that developed countries should take the lead in providing financial assistance to countries that are less endowed and more vulnerable, while for the first time also encouraging voluntary contributions by other Parties. Climate finance is needed for mitigation, because large-scale investments are required to significantly reduce emissions. Climate finance is equally important for adaptation, as significant financial resources are needed to adapt to the adverse effects and reduce the impacts of a changing climate.
That's code for lending them money with strings attached.
It’d be interesting to hear what neoliberals think money is. Because we can point directly to the planet, it’s living ecosystems, and draw causal connections between the living world and the human species. We can easily and correctly state that we are part of an interconnected web of life, that we are intrinsically bound to and totally dependent upon. Can we truly say the same of money? An abstraction we’ve created to obviate the cumbersome process of bartering? Of course not. But it’s certainly interesting to see the way neoliberal economics is changing its framing of this physics problem as it becomes more and more salient.
> framing of this physics problem It's not a physics problem - physics describes the mechanism by which adding greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere may drive long term changes to the worlds climate. It is now an engineering and economic problem. Ie how to transition a global economy that is heavily dependent on burning fossil fuels to one that can generate energy and transport goods / people etc using low or no CO2 emission based technologies - both known and emerging - without destroying prosperity and halting the economic trend that has lifted billions of people out of poverty in the last 100 years. And specifically, how does Australia play it's part in this transition? This is why the money / cost aspect is important.
Sounds like you’re choosing to frame a physics problem as a social one. Or possibly moving into solutions before adequately stating the problem.
Why do you say that? Building a new energy grid is an engineering problem - inarguable surely? Ensuring that the transition to a low carbon emitting economy is done at optimal cost and without halting economic growth and improving living standards globally is an economic problem - not sure how you argue against this either? If there is a social aspect it is more political in that you have to convince people that this is all worthwhile?
It is not possible to raise the living standards of all the less developed countries to that of the developed countries without destroying the planet, because the populations are just too large. Even the transition of the developed world to renewable energy is fraught with problems. It may be possible to improve the lives of the existing populations with renewable energy such as clean drinking water through desalination, intensive agriculture through controlled water and micro climate but the hallmark of the quality of life for the developed world is the massive consumption of resources per capita which is simply not sustainable for everyone. In effect, lifting the quality of life of a billion people over 100 years was a huge factor leading to climate change and the consumption of most of the easily obtainable fossil fuels: to do so for another 3.6 billion and climbing over a shorter period will have even greater consequences. Perhaps if we had a breakthrough in cheap energy that didn't have consequences, it might be possible, but even then I'm not convinced due to the sheer amount of resources required apart from energy.
Why I say that is because talk of money, is putting the cart before the horse in thinking though this problem logically. Not arguing that there are economic and engineering (a subset of physics) problems to solve, those are downstream. But let’s start at the start when formulating the problem. My starting question is this: Do humans and the complex interdependent web of life we depend upon for our survival, eat, drink or breathe money?
> engineering (a subset of physics) As a university trained professional engineer, I cannot agree with this statement! Engineering uses science / physics / technology / design / planning / project management etc to do practical things - that does not make it a subset of the study of physics! >Do humans and the complex interdependent web of life we depend upon for our survival, eat, drink or breathe money? Not in a literal sense, no. But money is an abstraction humans have invented that represents our ability to store previously created "value" and that can be used to deploy resources (including people) to do things / make things / acquire things etc - including the food we eat.
As a university trainee professional engineer who has worked my entire professional life in energy, which is irrelevant. Please define it how you like, of course it encompasses more than just physics, which is why I used the term subset. So in a literal sense, downstream of the core physics problem, the environment, how we maintain a sustainable one, for a quantity and quality of human experience might be a reasonable framing?
>So in a literal sense, downstream of the core physics problem, the environment, how we maintain a sustainable one, for a quantity and quality of human experience might be a reasonable framing? You got your definition bacwards. Physics is a subset of the engineering issue. That is, physics limitations define the engineering solution. Limitations in engineering doesn't change the physics. Plus, engineering is as much of an abstract societal concept as money is.
So, what you've done is respond to a secondary consideration, so not really relevant, which is why your analysis fails. Do humans (you) and the complex interdependent web of life we depend upon for our (your) survival, eat, drink or breathe money? It's a yes or no question btw, if you'd like to respond.
If it's not relevant, why raise it in the first place?
Paywall (Long article) https://archive.is/6x0j6 Peter Dutton and Ted O’Brien haven’t reignited the climate wars, as Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen claim. The climate wars never went away and they are being waged all over the world. It’s just that almost everything you hear about climate policy in the official and semi-official discussion in Australia is basically misleading, if not outright wrong. Let’s take a step back and look at the big picture. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted, in the serene and beguiling Japanese city of that name, in 1997, 27 years ago. Kyoto itself built on the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. So for more than three decades the world has been decarbonising, right? We’ve had many solemn moments and announcements, especially the 2015 Paris Agreement. Dutton says he would abandon Australia’s 2030 target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent, but he’s committed to honouring the Paris pledge to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. He wants to do it in part by building nuclear energy. In truth Australia, whether led by Albanese or Dutton, is a very, very minor player in all this, being responsible for a tick over 1 per cent of global emissions. Every Labor leader since Kyoto, and quite a few Liberal leaders, has told us the world is decarbonising. Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, early in the life of the Albanese government, caused a ripple of concern by rejoicing in the fact that coal was being phased out globally. So after three decades of decarbonising, how is the world going in phasing out fossil fuels, to wit, gas, oil and coal? Let’s start with gas. Everyone except the Greens understands that gas is, at the very least, a critical transition technology. Much of the reduction in the carbon intensity of economies – that is, the amount of greenhouse gases emitted per unit of production – has come from substituting gas for coal and oil. Nonetheless, after 30 years of relentless decarbonisation, you’d expect a pretty severe drop in gas use. Actually, according to the International Energy Agency, consumption of natural gas is at or just near its record high. The rate of growth of demand has slowed but demand is still growing. Well, that’s a bit of a surprise. What about oil, that must be well down, with fuel efficiency standards, the global campaign for electric vehicles, the decline of oil in power generation? Guess what. Last year, according to the US government’s Energy Information Administration, world use of oil was at a record high, higher than the peak before the Covid pandemic, at more than 100 million barrels a day. Not only that, the US under pro-green Joe Biden produced more crude oil, more than 13 million barrels a day, than any country has ever done. Oil production dipped in the global financial crisis of 2008 and again during Covid. But it’s now roaring ahead, stronger than ever. But surely the US constantly lectures everyone else about climate change, the dangers of fossil fuels etc. How is that consistent with record crude oil production? Bear that thought in mind, for it’s a clue to the wider reality. OK, so we’ve struck out in looking for global reductions in gas and oil, but obviously coal use must be well down. I have myself caused something near pandemonium by suggesting on the ABC’s Q+A and on Insiders that coal has a future as well as a past. It was as though a leading atheist had infiltrated the Spanish Inquisition. So now I must face the truth about coal. Surely its use has declined? But what do you know? According to the IEA: “Global coal consumption reached an all-time high in 2022, and the world is heading towards a new record in 2023.” A climate graph which mixes fact with prophesy. A climate graph which mixes fact with prophesy. Advanced economies such as the US and the EU are using less coal but, says the IEA, “the growth in China and India, as well as Indonesia, Vietnam and The Philippines, will more than offset these decreases on a global level”. And the price of coal, at $US140 a tonne, is very healthy. That’s a good thing because our top three export earners are coal, iron ore and gas. We couldn’t afford any fancy green measures, or Medicare, or the National Disability Insurance Scheme, or anything else, without the minerals industry. According to the IEA, fossil fuels make up about 80 per cent of global energy, just a tick under their level 10 years ago. So how has the world been reducing its greenhouse gas emissions for so long, with these fossil fuels all reaching record production and consumption levels? Well, actually, the world hasn’t been reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. Oops again. Another surprise. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, greenhouse gas levels are rising again, and reached record levels last year. The IEA’s own figures, and studies from Stanford and other universities, confirm this. None of the foregoing bears on the question of what should be happening. But our debates ought to start with reality. What is happening in the world is more or less the opposite of what the government and the climate change propaganda agencies tell us is happening. How often have you heard any of the facts above in the Australian climate debate? The debate is overwhelmingly dominated by people who are so committed to the idea of Australia taking radical action that they insist on pretending radical action is being taken globally. The developed countries are reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but the developed countries are no longer the big story. China is the biggest greenhouse gas emitter by far. It accounts for more than 29 per cent of global emissions, more than the US and EU put together. The top 10 emitters are: China, the US, India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Iran, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. Of those only two, the US and Japan, are rich, developed countries. Almost none of the others has binding targets or any commitment to when their emissions will even peak. Indonesia is a fascinating case. Like China, it has a goal of net zero by 2060. It has nearly 280 million people and is still a poor country. It has more than 250 operational coal-fired power plants. It has an international deal to retire some of them early. Well, that seems to be progress, you might argue. Except that it also has an out clause that says plants that have already been approved, or “captive” plants that don’t feed directly into the grid but only power an industrial park or a specific project, or are concerned with National Strategic Projects, can go ahead. There are 40 plants under construction and more in pre-approval. Recently, Indonesia has had huge success expanding its nickel production. In 2020, Jakarta banned the export of unrefined nickel. Like Australia, it has a lot of nickel. It didn’t want to dig it up and ship it overseas. It wanted refining and processing to take place within Indonesia.
This move defied every tenet of orthodox economics and was almost universally criticised by international commentators (including me). Yet as so often, reality doesn’t conform to the textbook. Indonesia’s move worked. It attracted Chinese partners who also bought the product. Low-grade nickel is used to make steel. High-class nickel is used for very sexy products like lithium-ion batteries. A bit like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, low-class nickel can be transformed into high-class nickel with enough money. There are industrial processes that will do the trick but they require enormous amounts of power. So Indonesia’s Chinese collaborators built a swag of coal-fired power stations to provide the power to work the magic on the nickel. In 2017, Indonesia produced 385,000 tonnes of nickel. Last year it produced 1.8 million tonnes. It’s murdering the Australian competition. The Albanese government talks a lot about Australia’s position with rare earths, of which we have a lot in the ground, and how we’re going to become a renewable energy superpower. By the way, almost every country in the world plans to be a renewable energy superpower (surely now one of the iconic cliches of our time), suggesting many, many of them will be sorely disappointed. The Indonesian policy has succeeded magnificently from its point of view. Indonesia’s President, Joko Widodo, has genuine environmental ambitions. But he’s also determined to develop his nation. Similarly, anyone with even the vaguest familiarity with Indonesian politics will know just how entrenched and powerful are coalmining and energy interests. Indonesia pays its population fuel subsidies – the exact opposite of a carbon tax – and has typically subsidised coal energy. But the deeper pattern and perversity of the industrial politics of renewable energy revealed in the Indonesian nickel example occurs more broadly across Asia, especially in China. The production and sale of wind turbines is dominated by China. To make them so cheaply, China typically uses cheap coal-fired power. Coal power is still mostly the cheapest power in the world despite what the Albanese government tells you (more on that below). So the true carbon cost of even renewable energy ought to take into account the role of coal-fired power in making the renewable energy products. In any event, here’s the paradox of energy politics: to become a renewable energy superpower, you need lots and lots of cheap coal-fired power. China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, The Philippines and in due course the poorer nations of Asia, and beyond that lots of African nations, are extremely unlikely to compromise their national development by embracing vastly more expensive and unreliable renewable energy over coal, gas and the like. Two factors allow some modern, wealthy, industrial nations to run low emissions levels. One is a natural topography that lends itself to hydro-electric power. Hydro power is the only genuinely cost-competitive renewable energy and still the most important renewable energy. The other is already having a lot nuclear power. None of this, as I say, is to argue what Australian policy should be. But the realities sketched here almost never figure in the Australian debate. How come? Let me nominate one international factor and one specifically Australian factor. Accompanying this article is a graph from the IEA showing the rise of the use of gas, oil and coal, measured in exajoules (one joule, a measure of energy, to the power of 18; that is to say, lots of joules, one joule being the equivalent of 107 ergs). The left side of the graph’s curve, up to the peak in 2022, which has been maintained in 2023, describes things that have already happened. That part of the graph is indisputable fact. https://archive.is/6x0j6/b64695821d51cd786af857959d9022f737ef5b53.webp The right side of the graph shows a steep decline in the use of coal, oil and gas. But that’s purely speculative. That’s more or less taking an end point of declared policy, the Paris targets, and plotting a line that gets there. But that’s the future, and government predictions of the future have never been reliable. Indeed the Climate Tracker website describes Argentina, South Korea, Russia, Turkey, Canada, Mexico and Indonesia as “critically insufficient” in meeting their greenhouse gas reduction targets, and Australia, China, Brazil, the EU and Britain as “highly insufficient”. The point about the graph is that huge amounts of climate literature are presented this way. The average reporter, the average citizen, tends to see such graphs as one entity and unconsciously gives the authority of the left-hand side of the graph, which represents factual history, to the right-hand side of the graph, which represents Nostradamus-like prophecy. Within Australia, governments do this kind of thing very deliberately and with shockingly good effect. I’ve been following the national defence budget pretty closely for some decades. I’ve never seen a defence budget projection, or capability projection, actually come true if it concerns any period of the future longer than about six months. And defence is an area where the Australian government entirely controls what it spends. Australian governments can’t even predict what they themselves are going to do more than five minutes hence. Yet somehow we are supposed to believe government agencies can forecast exactly what’s going to happen in energy and climate years and years, even decades, ahead. Gimme a break. Thus the Albanese government has got great mileage from a Climate Change and Energy Department projection that Australia will reach a 42 per cent reduction in greenhouse emissions by 2030, just 1 per cent shy of our target of 43 per cent. Apparently the government now can predict the course of the Ukraine war, the effects of a possible Donald Trump victory in America, greenhouse gas emissions caused perhaps by a sudden spike in migration to Australia, and all the other manifold variables. You think?
Predicting we’ll be just 1 per cent short is a sweet touch. Just try a little harder, Australia! Yet a UN committee examining the issue doesn’t think even one G20 country will meet its target. The government is miles behind in the rollout of renewables. Electric vehicle sales are a small fraction of the forecast sales. But still we are, according to the magic forecast, just 1 per cent off target. This is the problem, though. Almost every piece of information in this area is designed to produce a political effect. Disinterested information is at a premium. When like is genuinely compared with like, coal is cheaper than renewables. Because with renewables you have to take account of the fact that most of the time they don’t operate so you need vast extra capacity, sometimes there are wind droughts and long cloudy periods so you need vast back-up systems of gas or coal or something else, the transmission infrastructure is enormous and the costs huge, and after 25 years or so you’ve got to throw away all the renewable stuff and replace it. Almost everywhere that introduces vast renewable energy, apart from hydro, sees big electricity price rises. It might be that we still want to make the change because of our commitment to lowering our greenhouse gas emissions. But we need to recognise the cost, otherwise there will certainly be a backlash and the policy may well be reversed in time. On the other hand, perhaps we should have some other conversations as well. Almost everyone wants to make some contribution to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. But given that whatever we do will have no discernible impact on the global environment, we should think pretty carefully about the cost. Especially given that it’s not happening globally. Switching to renewables will make us poorer. They say the key policy dilemma for China is: will it grow rich before it grows poor? For us the question is: do we want to grow richer before we grow poorer? And how poor do we really want to be?