equanimity.blog

Dumping Net Zero

One of the reasons the Coalition parties have dumped Net Zero is that expensive power raises the cost of production and makes our industries less competitive. Australian industry certainly doesn’t need another hurdle when the political class is so keen to expose it wide open to international competition with overseas industries that receive subsidies from their governments.

Another reason is that electricity prices are hurting the hip pocket. That’s true for some people who are on really tight budgets. But judging from the people who come and go from my home (tenants, BnB guests, etc.) electricity isn’t expensive enough. The same can be said of some wasteful and inefficient industries. First hand experience tells me that even people who feel tied down to their job don’t do simple, easy things that will reduce their bill, even after they are shown what to do. They haven’t discovered that once you’ve acquired the right habits, it’s actually quite easy. They seem to regard the elements outside as adversaries, rather than things to be harnessed with insulation, windows, blinds and doors. Flicking a switch is too easy.

The ALP’s claim that Australia will make a difference to climate change by converting to renewables is misleading. That decision is overwhelmingly in the hands of the northern hemisphere. We should do our bit, but exaggerating our moral responsibility is gaslighting Australians.

Judging from Australia’s energy flows 2023-24, there is plenty of coal and gas to go around. True, but we live in a closed system called Earth. It should already be abundantly clear that we can only burn so much fossil fuel within a given time before we upset the balance of nature’s ability to reabsorb it safely. There are contentions about whether C0₂ concentrations max out (stop raising atmospheric temperatures). A quick, admittedly dubious AI check debunks that and in any case, there are other greenhouse gases such as methane that are far more potent and are yet to be released from permafrost.

What’s missing from the energy flow graph above is solar thermal and nuclear power. Both of these relatively carbon-neutral technologies rely on sources we have an abundance of; the sun and uranium.

It’s a relief to me that dumping Net Zero is only a rejection of deadlines, according to former National Party leader David Littleproud, not the ultimate goal of dealing with climate warming. In Why are climate change skeptics often right-wing conservatives? researchers found that people “focus selectively on climate data that confirm their beliefs, leading to inaction on mitigating climate change.”

However, there could be more obvious, macro-social reasons for climate skepticism on the right. Maybe all the cultural side-lining of Australians over the past 50 years has provoked a patriotic, consquences-be-damned rejection of Net Zero.

Because there are 8 billion+ of us living on a finite planet that we’re not getting off any time soon, we are living within environmental constraints. Therefore, it’s in our interests to exercise a certain amount of energy restraint. Facing up to the Polycrisis of limitations and the coming Great Simplification is our biggest challenge. We are much better off dispensing with the unrealistic pipe dreams of a Big Australia; in other words, business as usual.

The simple, easy, cheap alternative is doing with less. Less unnecessary stuff and growth. That includes consumption and – particularly for Australia – immigration. Despite the government misleading us by highlighting temporary, short term easing trends, immigration has continued to rise, as Jane O’Sullivan demonstrates in her latest report in Pearls and Irritations, When Will Immigration Return to ‘Normal’?.

How about we put Australia’s environment and our people first? Don’t they go hand in hand? For eco-nationalists, it does. Eco-nationalism marries up a love of one’s nation and its environment. For anyone who appreciates Australia’s ecology properly, a modest human presence is the bullseye on the dartboard.