Now they are getting alarmed, but where were they during the last couple of decades when all this was brewing?They started to get a bit worried a few years ago and I drafted this for a piece that did not get published.
THE JUDAS SHEEP ARE GETTING SHEEPISH
Most of the business leaders in recent times have disgracefully performed like “judas sheep,” leading the flock to the slaughterhouse.
Too many leaders of industry groups and board members of corporations betrayed the interests of their members and shareholders, and the national interest as well.
They embraced wokeness and pushed or failed to resist a laundry list of destructive, divisive and productivity-sapping progressive causes. You name it - net zero, The Racist Voice, DEI, same-sex marriage, lockdowns, mandatory jabs, union-driven IR reforms.
Jennifer Westacott showed the way during her tenure at the Business Council of Australia. She has moved on to pasture in higher education but her spirit lives on. Last year the BCA announced that it was looking forward to working with the Net Zero Economy Authority “ensuring the transition to net zero creates improved business and employment outcomes across communities.”
Some of the captains of industry are having a “road to Damascus” experience, call it a “Road to Net Zero” experience. Well, not quite, Paul on the road to Damascus changed from persecuting Christians to leading them. Our current travellers still want to go to Damascus, but not so fast.
Some of the usual suspects have been out and about lately, pleading for a less punishing timetable for the green transition, more realistic or “doable” targets for 2030. Oh but we still want to get to net zero by 2050 of course.
This may sound prudent and reasonable but it denies the brutal reality that the transition to wind and solar power won’t happen because it can’t because there are wind droughts and there is no grid-scale storage.
AND THE TREASON OF THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS Strangely not published by The Australian.
Almost exactly 100 years ago in France, Julian Benda wrote The Treason of the Intellectuals to challenge the chattering classes to cease and desist from stoking the violent political passions that were dividing the Republic.
At present public intellectuals in the quality press have the opportunity to be role models in critical thinking about difficult and divisive issues à la Benda.
Responsible public intellectuals will engage with the signature issues of the time to establish one or more areas of competence where they have more or less well-informed opinions. They can provide invaluable guidance to advance informed public debate on those matters because they have access to the best brains in the country to help them to explain and clarify scientific and technical matters.
If they do their homework in their areas of competence they can be taken seriously, with the usual reservations about experts. On other topics they have no more credibility than their readers because we can only recycle what we regard as reliable opinions offered by other people.
Paul Kelly is a leading public intellectual on the basis the circulation of The Australian, his books, and the years that he has spent reading, observing and writing about Australian politics. That is his area of competence, as he demonstrated in his appraisal of the prospects for nuclear power.
In The Australian 10/11/2021 he described the idea of conservatives winning an election with a promise of nuclear power as “a grand fantasy” because it will take years to achieve bipartisan support at the Federal level and state levels. “It would never be established amid an energy policy war between the coalition and labour.”
Contrast that considered opinion with his position on climate change and net zero. He apparently accepts that the science is settled in favour of warming alarmism despite the empirical evidence that the warming in modern times has been beneficial and we are still short of the temperature during the Roman warm period which was even more favourable for life on earth.
Similarly, the post industrial increase in the level of CO2 has been literally life-saving because the level of CO2 during the Little Ice Age was barely enough to keep the plants alive. Still, Kelly exhorts us to make all efforts to achieve net zero even if we can’t do it by 2050. In The Australian, 6/2/2021 he applauded Morrison’s commitment to net zero and the Paris accord, against “blind conservative resistance.”
Likewise, Greg Sheridan has an area of competence in foreign affairs and defence, while he deplores the misguided folk who refuse to dance to the tune of the climate alarmists and the net zero enthusiasts.
In my opinion, when public intellectuals aggressively assert their views on important and controversial matters that are outside their areas of competency, they should warn the readers that they have wandered out of their lane. If they have not checked the facts and consulted well-qualified experts on both sides of the case they may unwittingly mislead their readers.
Climate and energy became signature issues after warming alarmism emerge in the US in the 1980s and there has been plenty of time for senior journalists to learn enough to form realistic views on climate and energy policies.
Some have done this, Terry McCrann, Andrew Bolt, Graham Lloyd, Piers Ackerman and Chris Mitchell for example. Some politicians have done the same, notably Malcolm Roberts, Craig Kelly, Matt Canavan, Alex Antic, Gerard Rennick and Ralph Babet. In the street there are many others, like the Five Dock Climate Realists in Sydney, who have done the hard yards to achieve robust positions without holding formal qualifications in climate science.
Too many commentators and editors have metaphorically shouted “Fire” in the crowded theatre of the climate and energy debate and enabled the unsettled science of climate alarmism to capture the hearts and minds of the people and the politicians. That process was accelerated by publicly funded activists in the ABC, the schools and the universities, especially the university-funded site The Conversation where alternative views are excluded by editorial fiat.
That unsettled science drove the net zero crusade around the world that has wasted trillions of dollars to get more expensive and less reliable power with massive collateral damage to forests and farmlands.
Utility prices for gas, water, electricity are also inflated by a corrupt regulatory system which allows utilities to keep charging users again and again for infrastructure structure they paid for long ago, such as NSW power stations or Warragamba Dam.
"Replacement cost" valuation and charging methods mean users pay and pay over again for a rate of return on assets long since paid for. It's as if you keep getting charged rent for the house you paid off years ago.
The Productivity Commission is an abject failure on utility charges.
Talk about a bullet to the head of value adding industry in a rather dumb country.
Ludowici manufactured in Australia for over 150 years. High labour costs and regulations made it easier to do this overseas. Without a large competitive advantage the FMIA is a vote winning tactic and has no more basis in reality than trying to change the climate!
Australian manufacturing was difficult without high energy prices. Labour costs and union obstacles, a small market and distance to export were all factors. Our once proud country specialises in coffee making and fiction!
The numbers in this article are multiple bells tolling around the world, warning us boiling frogs, simmering away in posts of climate change-cult-like ideology. Here where we contribute barely 1% of the world's emissions, yet our electricity prices are soaring, and as this and other fact-driven articles tell us, we are committing standard-of-living-economical hari-kari.
Australia should be the envy of the world with our deposits of uranium that could supercharge our economy and rebuild our manufacturing sector. And it could be the cleanest and greenest given technology in nuclear power. Australia's Liberal Party abrogated its duty of care to the nation in the May 3 '25 elections. It's still rooting around in the back of Party HQ's couch for some policies and counter-offensives to challenge Albanese, Bowen, Burke and the rest of the useful idiots. The hell of it is we have no political party currently that either has a clue or courage to do what needs to be done to one of the richest on earth in terms of GDP potential in order to save it, and us. The future does not look good.
In the private sector there is something called corporate negligence: and directors can be hauled over the coals for committing it. I cannot decide if Labor should be up for that, or fraud... or both, or something a lot worse.
Why worry about nuclear power when we have soooooo much coal and gas to be exploited for our own use still stuck under ground. The connection to uranium assumes that global warming is a real threat and we can alter the climate!
Not assuming a connection to climate change, instead understanding that nuclear power is what we need to power our economy. Have a mix - coal, gas and nuclear and give Australian business as well as families the cheapest, most stable and abundant power of any country on earth. Use all the tools in the box if that improves the outcome.
Possibly like you, I will be long gone but I try (against the odds) to stay positive and hope that this country will be turned around and away from the abyss this government is cattle-prodding us towards :-)
Many in our culturally and politically dominant class see themselves as moral crusaders for a better world. They often do this by embracing fantasy causes, and ignoring the worst suffering in the world and the problems which we really could fix. How do we get them to engage with the world as it is? Difficult, as they are generally well-off and largely escape the worst consequences of their beliefs and misallocation of resources.
Yes, bit of a fantasy without reliable, energy at a bearable cost. But a cabal of school-uni- union-parliament in govt are believers in fiction and spin.
Northern NSW, Queensland, Northern Territory and northern West Australia can all get cheap power from the Sun. I wish solar panels werre not made by China. Australians want cheaper power so why can't Australia give employment to dole bludgers and start making solar panels? If the laws stopping single people being forced to move towards a job our unemployed would be halved. Many of the government regulations are a farce. The Australian Labor Party brings in millions of immigrants, many of them sit on the welfare department, education department, etc. Australia is doing little enough to make us economically viable what with current regulations and the automatic assertion of dole bludgers that they are unemployable. Of course they are. They simply don't want to work. Solution is simple, no work, no pay, no play. Why can't Australia change the rules? Because polititians might be branded with whatever "crime" you can think up and members of Parliament might be forced to pass some laws that are "inconvenient". The British Prime Minister and the whole UK is going to the dogs. Australia will no doubt follow suit.
Dear Stephanie - the power generated by gusts of wind and sunshine cannot deliver the high temperatures, let alone at consistently, to power manufacturing let alone AI. Solar panels are not the answer and why buy when we have abundance below the earth that we own. Industry and commerce (from schools, to hospitals, to road building, to housing, to manufacture of food, clothing, medical needs etc) need reliable and cheap power. Neither solar nor wind supply either.
You are good at making assumptions about my beliefs. How about giving me some mathematical statistics ie the cost of digging up and transporting the coal - it doesn't just jump out of the ground, opposed to the cost of buying solar panels, made in China or Australia. (China is looking to becoming a world power.)
Now they are getting alarmed, but where were they during the last couple of decades when all this was brewing?They started to get a bit worried a few years ago and I drafted this for a piece that did not get published.
THE JUDAS SHEEP ARE GETTING SHEEPISH
Most of the business leaders in recent times have disgracefully performed like “judas sheep,” leading the flock to the slaughterhouse.
Too many leaders of industry groups and board members of corporations betrayed the interests of their members and shareholders, and the national interest as well.
They embraced wokeness and pushed or failed to resist a laundry list of destructive, divisive and productivity-sapping progressive causes. You name it - net zero, The Racist Voice, DEI, same-sex marriage, lockdowns, mandatory jabs, union-driven IR reforms.
Jennifer Westacott showed the way during her tenure at the Business Council of Australia. She has moved on to pasture in higher education but her spirit lives on. Last year the BCA announced that it was looking forward to working with the Net Zero Economy Authority “ensuring the transition to net zero creates improved business and employment outcomes across communities.”
Some of the captains of industry are having a “road to Damascus” experience, call it a “Road to Net Zero” experience. Well, not quite, Paul on the road to Damascus changed from persecuting Christians to leading them. Our current travellers still want to go to Damascus, but not so fast.
Some of the usual suspects have been out and about lately, pleading for a less punishing timetable for the green transition, more realistic or “doable” targets for 2030. Oh but we still want to get to net zero by 2050 of course.
This may sound prudent and reasonable but it denies the brutal reality that the transition to wind and solar power won’t happen because it can’t because there are wind droughts and there is no grid-scale storage.
AND THE TREASON OF THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS Strangely not published by The Australian.
Almost exactly 100 years ago in France, Julian Benda wrote The Treason of the Intellectuals to challenge the chattering classes to cease and desist from stoking the violent political passions that were dividing the Republic.
At present public intellectuals in the quality press have the opportunity to be role models in critical thinking about difficult and divisive issues à la Benda.
Responsible public intellectuals will engage with the signature issues of the time to establish one or more areas of competence where they have more or less well-informed opinions. They can provide invaluable guidance to advance informed public debate on those matters because they have access to the best brains in the country to help them to explain and clarify scientific and technical matters.
If they do their homework in their areas of competence they can be taken seriously, with the usual reservations about experts. On other topics they have no more credibility than their readers because we can only recycle what we regard as reliable opinions offered by other people.
Paul Kelly is a leading public intellectual on the basis the circulation of The Australian, his books, and the years that he has spent reading, observing and writing about Australian politics. That is his area of competence, as he demonstrated in his appraisal of the prospects for nuclear power.
In The Australian 10/11/2021 he described the idea of conservatives winning an election with a promise of nuclear power as “a grand fantasy” because it will take years to achieve bipartisan support at the Federal level and state levels. “It would never be established amid an energy policy war between the coalition and labour.”
Contrast that considered opinion with his position on climate change and net zero. He apparently accepts that the science is settled in favour of warming alarmism despite the empirical evidence that the warming in modern times has been beneficial and we are still short of the temperature during the Roman warm period which was even more favourable for life on earth.
Similarly, the post industrial increase in the level of CO2 has been literally life-saving because the level of CO2 during the Little Ice Age was barely enough to keep the plants alive. Still, Kelly exhorts us to make all efforts to achieve net zero even if we can’t do it by 2050. In The Australian, 6/2/2021 he applauded Morrison’s commitment to net zero and the Paris accord, against “blind conservative resistance.”
Likewise, Greg Sheridan has an area of competence in foreign affairs and defence, while he deplores the misguided folk who refuse to dance to the tune of the climate alarmists and the net zero enthusiasts.
In my opinion, when public intellectuals aggressively assert their views on important and controversial matters that are outside their areas of competency, they should warn the readers that they have wandered out of their lane. If they have not checked the facts and consulted well-qualified experts on both sides of the case they may unwittingly mislead their readers.
Climate and energy became signature issues after warming alarmism emerge in the US in the 1980s and there has been plenty of time for senior journalists to learn enough to form realistic views on climate and energy policies.
Some have done this, Terry McCrann, Andrew Bolt, Graham Lloyd, Piers Ackerman and Chris Mitchell for example. Some politicians have done the same, notably Malcolm Roberts, Craig Kelly, Matt Canavan, Alex Antic, Gerard Rennick and Ralph Babet. In the street there are many others, like the Five Dock Climate Realists in Sydney, who have done the hard yards to achieve robust positions without holding formal qualifications in climate science.
Too many commentators and editors have metaphorically shouted “Fire” in the crowded theatre of the climate and energy debate and enabled the unsettled science of climate alarmism to capture the hearts and minds of the people and the politicians. That process was accelerated by publicly funded activists in the ABC, the schools and the universities, especially the university-funded site The Conversation where alternative views are excluded by editorial fiat.
That unsettled science drove the net zero crusade around the world that has wasted trillions of dollars to get more expensive and less reliable power with massive collateral damage to forests and farmlands.
Utility prices for gas, water, electricity are also inflated by a corrupt regulatory system which allows utilities to keep charging users again and again for infrastructure structure they paid for long ago, such as NSW power stations or Warragamba Dam.
"Replacement cost" valuation and charging methods mean users pay and pay over again for a rate of return on assets long since paid for. It's as if you keep getting charged rent for the house you paid off years ago.
The Productivity Commission is an abject failure on utility charges.
Talk about a bullet to the head of value adding industry in a rather dumb country.
Ludowici manufactured in Australia for over 150 years. High labour costs and regulations made it easier to do this overseas. Without a large competitive advantage the FMIA is a vote winning tactic and has no more basis in reality than trying to change the climate!
Yet our government knows better than the manufacturers!?
Australian manufacturing was difficult without high energy prices. Labour costs and union obstacles, a small market and distance to export were all factors. Our once proud country specialises in coffee making and fiction!
The numbers in this article are multiple bells tolling around the world, warning us boiling frogs, simmering away in posts of climate change-cult-like ideology. Here where we contribute barely 1% of the world's emissions, yet our electricity prices are soaring, and as this and other fact-driven articles tell us, we are committing standard-of-living-economical hari-kari.
Australia should be the envy of the world with our deposits of uranium that could supercharge our economy and rebuild our manufacturing sector. And it could be the cleanest and greenest given technology in nuclear power. Australia's Liberal Party abrogated its duty of care to the nation in the May 3 '25 elections. It's still rooting around in the back of Party HQ's couch for some policies and counter-offensives to challenge Albanese, Bowen, Burke and the rest of the useful idiots. The hell of it is we have no political party currently that either has a clue or courage to do what needs to be done to one of the richest on earth in terms of GDP potential in order to save it, and us. The future does not look good.
In the private sector there is something called corporate negligence: and directors can be hauled over the coals for committing it. I cannot decide if Labor should be up for that, or fraud... or both, or something a lot worse.
Why worry about nuclear power when we have soooooo much coal and gas to be exploited for our own use still stuck under ground. The connection to uranium assumes that global warming is a real threat and we can alter the climate!
Bull sh1t!
Not assuming a connection to climate change, instead understanding that nuclear power is what we need to power our economy. Have a mix - coal, gas and nuclear and give Australian business as well as families the cheapest, most stable and abundant power of any country on earth. Use all the tools in the box if that improves the outcome.
Nuclear power.......I'll be dead and buried by the time that power source ever gets approved let alone constructed in Australia.
Yes have a mix but.......
Possibly like you, I will be long gone but I try (against the odds) to stay positive and hope that this country will be turned around and away from the abyss this government is cattle-prodding us towards :-)
Many in our culturally and politically dominant class see themselves as moral crusaders for a better world. They often do this by embracing fantasy causes, and ignoring the worst suffering in the world and the problems which we really could fix. How do we get them to engage with the world as it is? Difficult, as they are generally well-off and largely escape the worst consequences of their beliefs and misallocation of resources.
I agree I think most well off Australians can afford (and don't give a shit) the cost of unreliable wind and solar.
I'm all right Jack bugger you!
Yes, bit of a fantasy without reliable, energy at a bearable cost. But a cabal of school-uni- union-parliament in govt are believers in fiction and spin.
Northern NSW, Queensland, Northern Territory and northern West Australia can all get cheap power from the Sun. I wish solar panels werre not made by China. Australians want cheaper power so why can't Australia give employment to dole bludgers and start making solar panels? If the laws stopping single people being forced to move towards a job our unemployed would be halved. Many of the government regulations are a farce. The Australian Labor Party brings in millions of immigrants, many of them sit on the welfare department, education department, etc. Australia is doing little enough to make us economically viable what with current regulations and the automatic assertion of dole bludgers that they are unemployable. Of course they are. They simply don't want to work. Solution is simple, no work, no pay, no play. Why can't Australia change the rules? Because polititians might be branded with whatever "crime" you can think up and members of Parliament might be forced to pass some laws that are "inconvenient". The British Prime Minister and the whole UK is going to the dogs. Australia will no doubt follow suit.
Dear Stephanie - the power generated by gusts of wind and sunshine cannot deliver the high temperatures, let alone at consistently, to power manufacturing let alone AI. Solar panels are not the answer and why buy when we have abundance below the earth that we own. Industry and commerce (from schools, to hospitals, to road building, to housing, to manufacture of food, clothing, medical needs etc) need reliable and cheap power. Neither solar nor wind supply either.
Solar panels!
Obviously you believe we can lower the earths temperature if we made the panels in Australia.
Forget solar just dig up coal!
You are good at making assumptions about my beliefs. How about giving me some mathematical statistics ie the cost of digging up and transporting the coal - it doesn't just jump out of the ground, opposed to the cost of buying solar panels, made in China or Australia. (China is looking to becoming a world power.)