Guest essay by Eric Worrall
WUWT recently reported how budget cuts to ARENA renewables programmes were an “existential threat” to green innovation. Now we learn that it is immoral to slash green budgets to try to contain the spiralling Aussie government debt.
Global Warming Is A Greater Moral Challenge Than Budget Repair
Australia is at a critical moment.
Cutting carbon emissions remains one of the key challenges of our time. Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd described it as “the greatest moral challenge of our generation” and Barack Obama has stated “we will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations”.
Between 2012 and 2016, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) supported 254 renewable energy projects across a range of technologies including new storage technology, ocean energy, solar thermal, and solar PV or enabling technologies. These projects have advanced clean technologies and brought the benefit of thousands of new jobs to every Australian state and territory.
Yet the future of ARENA is currently seriously imperilled. Scott Morrison’s Budget Savings (omnibus) bill, currently before the parliament, includes a cut of $1.3 billion to ARENA, which effectively would mean the end of ARENA.
…
The Prime Minister has stated that budget repair is a “moral challenge”. Yet surely the future of the planet poses an even greater moral challenge. Renewable energy is one of the best solutions to our greenhouse pollution — as well as a solution for regions that need jobs. ARENA has a critical role to play in Australia’s renewable energy future and needs to be pulled off the chopping block.
…
If renewables was a real business which delivered value, they could try to trade their way out of trouble – they could innovate, expand into new markets, trim costs, increase sales to restore profitability. But renewables are not a real business, they are a political fantasy, totally dependent on taxpayer handouts. So their only option when times get tough is to squeal like stuck pigs, to try to frighten politicians into maintaining the money font.
“Yet surely the future of the planet poses an even greater moral challenge.” What about the future of people?
My heart bleeds for their subsidised posteriors
What a perfect case they think they have! The ultimate card that trumps everything else, including apparently, political and economic survival. And now that “the science is settled”, there’s no need to bother with further arguments (QED and QED again, so there!). But I still think there’s a possibility that the territory that these Flatlanders are carving out for themselves will turn out to be a kind of Petri dish, so that they’re up for observation by anyone who isn’t restricted to the same 2D world.
EU spent 1 Trillion Euros building 410 GWs of RE and only get 38 GWs output and 3x in cost of energy.
It was just fiat money, not real. It is the Greek solution on a larger scale. Growth and real income are the losers.
Global Warming Is
AGreater[for the] Moral[ly] Challenge[d].There, fixed.
Kevin Rudd, in his maiden parliamentary speech, declared the General Sales Tax (GST), introduced by the Liberal Party, as ( you guessed it ) immoral!
Did he strike out this immorality when he became Prime Minister or did he use the money for ( ahem) moral purposes? No prizes for the correct answer.
Morality and patriotism are the last refuges of the desperate scoundrel.
Selective child religious/moral policy is an actual moral hazard.
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming may be a risk. It is not for the children (a.k.a. Posterity).
The circle of insanity has been closed. This is official insanity by the way.
The best example of innovation in the face of an existential threat is arguably WW2. Lots of people thought the war was won by the boffins. example
Government support clearly made things happen.
Another example of government supported innovation is the early space program.
Based on the above examples, greenies and bureaucrats will believe that all that is necessary for innovation is to throw enough money at the problem. They are wrong.
Certain preconditions are necessary for innovation. Consider the internet. Affordable computers are necessary for the internet. Integrated circuits are necessary for affordable computers. The transistor had to be invented for integrated circuits to be possible. The first practical transistor was demonstrated in 1947. No matter what you did, you weren’t going to have the internet in 1900.
The necessary preconditions aren’t there for renewable energy to become a viable replacement for our current system. Breakthroughs are necessary. Breakthroughs almost never happen on demand.
There is a little book that should be compulsory for policy makers. Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned convincingly shows why breakthroughs are almost always the result of serendipitous discovery rather than bureaucratic planning.
Sorry, won’t click on a huffpoo link. The sooner they go out of business, the better the Internet gets.
Fighting the coming space alien invasion is an even greater moral challenge. Priorities.
Especially since we discovered that their sacred text, “How to serve Mankind”, is actually a cookbook.
+ 10;-)
long pork should be served well done
the founders of this nation considered using government to impose your “morality” on the nation was the most EVIL form of tyranny……..and i am aware a tyrant is ONE person rule, but the point remains, using the government as the “tyrant” ends up the same.
In an age of moral relativism governed as much by fashion as by Green politicians there is no sustainable beacon of light to be found. This has already been well demonstrated by science, economics and Green agnostics. So the Green Imposition return claiming a moral imperative. With no subsidies or tax breaks, plenary indulgences, guaranteed welcoming committees at the Pearly Gates, their moral claim is as equally unsustainable as it is ridiculous.
Looked at the Arena projects list. By and large a complete waste, government subsidy boondoogle to others private project fantasies. More wind farms is not innovation. Biodiesel from microalgae is not only not innovation (been done by Sapphire, by Joule), it doesn’t scale for two insurmountable reasons so is also just stupid (as Sapphire and Joule both found at pilot scale). Essay Salvation by Swamp tells that tale. No projects on energy storage other than pumped hydro–not innovation, texhnology has been around for many decades.
The warmunist whine about funding energy innovation cited in the post is just that, another delusional whine. Not to mention opportunity cost. $Aus Billion a year buys a nice, shiney new ~800MW CCGT each year. Cuts CO2 emissions to ~35% of conventional coal, with cheaper capital operating at ~2x higher fuel efficiency. That is how US has been reducing net emissions. Its how the UK and Australia could, if they really wanted to do something economical that makes simple common sense unlike greenwashed nonsense.
Smart energy which requires taxpayer subsidies is not the least bit smart.
In my opinion it is “Dumb” energy
“Smart” energy would be truely smart when it is at least cheaper overall and more convenient than current fossil energy.
Cheers
Roger
http://www,rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
The Huffington Post has as much legitimacy writing about morality as Bill Clinton does speaking of marital fidelity.
“Yet surely the future of the planet poses an even greater moral challenge.”
Wow! I had no idea that little Australia controlled “the future of the planet!”. And for a mere Aus $1.3 billion a year!
/sarc
To say that I object to the idea that funding of ‘green projects’ is a moral issue would be an understatement.
The catastrophic warmunists want us to to accept (I hesitate to use the word ‘believe’) that we should engineer our way out of a looming climate crisis of our own making. A practical question you might imagine.
To present it as a moral issue is an attempt to make it unarguable, just like some religious ‘moral’ issues of yesteryear. It’s a variant of the appeal to authority. The great authority in the sky, as relayed/interpreted by the priesthood (a.k.a. approved ‘scientists’) would be angry with you, ergo it’s immoral. That, mixed with the concept of sin. Hang your head in shame, lest you be attacked on facebook/twitter etc..
Truly revolting, simply demonstrating that their argument is lost.
Just a thought not long ago we had the subject came up of the ability of off shore wind farms to “weather” a hurricane. Guess who’s coming to dinner? It looks like Hermine is going to roll right over Rhode Islands brandy new wind farm.
If Hermine regains hurricane strength it could get interesting.
michael
MtM, looks like Hermine missed. But the point is still well taken, as she was close enough.
HM
mm, I not sure of the storms present location. Block Island is where the wind farm is. A northeast turn would spare Ct, Mass and R.I. but Block Island is far enough east to catch some of it I would think.
I have been through enough of them when I was young to know nothing is sure as to which they can turn.
michael
The worst of the greenies and warmistas pray that no wind farm is damaged but are dying for the next devastating Katrina for finger-pointing.
It’s a no-brainer for a politician, they have not got a clue how to fix the economy but they can always grandstand, win votes and raise taxes with the climate.
To help overseas folks understand the context
The Fairfax press reran the Huff piece on strictly commercial lines
See Fairfax aims its papers’ content at the
inner city green left mostly the teachers lawyers IT people journos etc
They love to be told how wicked are capitalist economies with climate change a moral issue replacing religion
I placed an email comment on a Fairfax blog
suggesting IPCC projections were astray (in light ofJohn Christy’s evidence to c
Congress)
One higjly indignant response was to ask me
” did I have a clear conscience about the likely
deaths of millions no billions?”
This is the apocalyptic mindset that Fairfax plays up to
Whereas readers of this blog like to be told – what?
Plenty of publications with targeted audiences out there…
False equivalence.
False equivalence is Grift’s bread and butter. He’s well-schooled in propaganda – like any good promotional salesman.
This underscores the underlying truth of all government activities, who ends up with the money ?
As you may remember, Deep Throat of Watergate fame said “Follow the money.”
Funny how renewables are much cheaper than eeebil coal, put “old” generators out of business because “wind is free” and get massively cheaper and better every year still can’t operate a single day without subsidies.
Budget repair is a financial challenge, not a moral one. While ARENA is financial suicide, which used to be considered immoral.
Dang the insanity – full speed ahead!