Sound and Fury

How shouting and insults expose Net Zero as a tale signifying nothing

“When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of losers.” — Socrates

After the Liberal Party was handed its worst defeat since the 1940s, the responses to the half-pregnant announcement to ditch net zero (but stay in the Paris Accord) are worth a deeper dive because they only serve to prove how empty the locker of informed debate has become.

This is not new — something we witnessed with the juvenile antics over the nuclear debate. Our politicians’ first instinct, instead of factual arguments, was to resort to three-eyed fish memes from The Simpsons. Low-resolution politics at its finest.

Prime Minister Albanese has called the Coalition a “clown show” for abandoning net zero. Treasurer Jim Chalmers resorted to his preferred “cookers and crackpots” narrative. Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen took to social media to say:

“There was once a time when the Liberal Party had values… these days they cater to the extremists in their party and coalition… today’s decision just shows how out of touch they are with modern Australia.”

The Liberal Party should take heart that the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Teals are so concerned about its welfare. Oh, to be comforted with the sympathy of hypocrites.

Cynicism aside, is the ad hominem a sign of the ALP lacking self-belief — despite the overwhelming majority it holds in the lower house — that it feels the need to give oxygen to the net zero announcement? If the ALP were supremely confident that its self-proclaimed mandate on the energy transition was working, the best course of action would be simply to watch the tinderbox Coalition burn to the ground from the other side of the river. Instead, they are watering its garden with gasoline when the global winds are clearly blowing ever stronger in the opposite direction.

The Gucci-green Teal independents are up in arms, too. Why? If the writing is on the wall for a party in such “disarray,” shouldn’t they be popping champagne corks instead of warning their political rivals that such a policy position will make the Liberals unelectable in city seats? If the Coalition has signed its own death warrant, why did Allegra Spender and Kate Chaney feel the need to pen an op-ed in the Australian Financial Review (AFR) issuing concerns about capital flight? If they had done their homework, they would have noted the disbandment of the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) and the record investment in new fossil-fuel projects made since by its former members — events that predate the Liberal decision to become the knuckle-dragging climate deniers they scorn.

Chris Bowen’s appointed climate expert, Climate Change Authority Chairman Matt Kean, streamed from the COP30 summit in Brazil:

“The rest of the world has not waved the white flag just because the White House has… we know also that there is a huge economic dividend for Australia by being part of this global effort… our renewable energy can deliver some of the cheapest energy anywhere in the world, underwriting a new era of prosperity… huge economic growth and great opportunities for our energy-intensive industries… being onshore and thriving in a low-carbon world… whether the deniers or delayers like it or not…”

He then then threw in a plug for COP31 in Adelaide.

Mr Kean may tell us that the meltdown “has nothing to do with renewables,” despite Tomago’s co-owners writing down their investment to zero because they cannot source cheap energy after long-term coal contracts expire. It is likely to join a growing chorus of domestic smelters thriving on government handouts to stay alive. If this is what a new era of prosperity looks like, perhaps they can consult our unemployed miners on how to dig a bottomless pit.

The Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change, Simon Stiell, starkly contrasted Kean’s social-media enthusiasm when he said the quiet part out loud about the torturous death of net zero, in a vain attempt to guilt-trip the shrinking pool of the gullible:

“My message to negotiators at the end of week one at #COP30… I know you are tired. But once again I am asking you to push further… because, in the end, the Paris Agreement is yours to preserve and put to work. The issues that may not be priorities for you are clearly issues and priorities for other nations… if you do not align and find common ground on issues important to others, COP30 will not deliver outcomes that show Paris is working.”

The Paris Accord is clearly not working, given 90 per cent of countries missed the February 2025 deadline to submit their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). At COP30, 82 countries have yet to submit their 2035 NDC targets. Watch the hips, not the lips.

In the “Great Green Grift” on Powerlines, we highlighted the sheer hypocrisy of COP summits and how little these sanctimonious echo chambers have achieved over the past three decades, other than creating an explosion of rent-seekers and frequent-flyer miles. No wonder Boeing and Airbus are forecasting the commercial jet fleet to double over the next two decades.

If Australia wins COP31, then the $1 billion estimate to host it may prove conservative when organisers discover Adelaide Airport will need to significantly expand the aprons to park all the private jets of elitist lecturers. At least it will be a preferable outcome to Brazil felling 100,000 trees of protected Amazonian rainforest to build a four-lane, purpose-built 13-kilometre highway to ferry 50,000 delegates to and from the summit.

Of note, our local climate carpetbaggers and clean-energy councils have been extremely busy writing self-serving social-media posts lambasting the Liberals and highlighting the imperative of securing COP31. This indicates a greater concern for preserving the contents of their bank accounts than for saving the planet.

Perhaps these collectivist climate zealots should take time to read Powerlines’ excellent piece, The World We Model vs the World We Live In. The pro-renewables grifters would wince when forced to realise they are not entitled to their own facts. We are consuming fossil fuels at record levels and polluting at ever-increasing rates.

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen will no doubt shower us with endless posts from COP30 on the supposed scientific consensus, but the public is fast learning that the ruse is up over his disastrous energy policies, and repetition is not a substitute for evidence. We should remind ourselves that he is putting himself straight back on the same ropes that forced PM Albanese’s henchmen to keep him in the freezer before the last federal election.

Whether it be Solar-Share, the poor subsidising the wealthy to install home batteries, chickens coming home to roost on the Waratah Super Battery delay, or rural communities up in arms over transmission — energy prices keep heading higher. It is clear his Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) is the architect of this policy-on-the-go strategy because it is constantly devising new ways to stem the bleeding from the gushing artery of the very non-existent energy statecraft it created and severed with these uncommercial thought bubbles.

Perhaps over a caipirinha cocktail between groupthink sessions, Mr Bowen can ask whether Mr Kean can deny that the delay of his signature policy in his former role will see that department deliver the first cab off the rank — the Central West Orana Renewable Energy Zone — by 2028, five years after he left office, and at a cost more than eight times the original estimate.

“Some things must be done on faith, but the most dangerous kind of faith is that which masquerades as ‘science.’” — Thomas Sowell