Is Joe Biden Copying the Mistakes of Australia’s “Unloseable” Climate Election?

Left, Failed Aussie Green Left Leader Bill Shorten. By Ross Caldwell – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link. Right, Democrat Presidential wannabe Joe Biden. By David Lienemann – White House (V011013DL-0556), Public Domain, Link

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

h/t JoNova; Democrat Presidential Candidate Joe Biden is rushing to the polls with a plan to slam everyone with a raft of new green taxes. But as the 2019 Australian experience demonstrates, you cannot win an election by campaigning for higher taxes and the destruction of entire industries, no matter how much big city media cheerleaders love your plan to slam the deplorables.

Biden gambles on placing climate change at heart of US energy policy

Derek Brower, US energy editor

Republicans say the promise to invest $2tn in green energy threatens tens of thousands of jobs in oil and gas sector

He served in an Obama administration that oversaw a historic surge in American oil and gas production, as shale went mainstream. Tens of thousands of wells were drilled and energy-bearing rocks fractured from North Dakota to Texas. And the industry cheered when the government he was part of lifted a ban on crude exports in 2015.

Yet, Joe Biden — armed with a commanding lead in the polls ahead of November’s US presidential election — now promises a root-and-branch overhaul of the American energy system that will put climate change at its heart and which one worried industry adviser describes as “a Tet offensive” on the fossil fuels industry.

The plan, which will be aired again at the Democratic party convention this week, earmarks $2tn in spending over the next four years to use climate policy to drag the economy out of its pandemic-era recession. But Mr Biden’s plans for the energy sector would reach into everything from Middle East geopolitics to the global race with China over clean tech and is likely to prove unpopular among parts of the US electorate — dependent on oil and gas for jobs — in an election year.

Read more: https://www.ft.com/content/2ac477e7-34a4-4c0e-b9f4-018cef47d67d

How does Biden’s strategy compare to Australia in 2019? The parallels are remarkable.

The increasingly left wing Australian Labor Party went to the polls in 2019 against struggling incumbents, with a plan to do everything their most radical green inner city supporters wanted; hardline social justice, elimination of coal mining and new curbs on industry, police reform, carbon pricing, massive investment in renewables. They ignored the protests of rural supporters, coal miners and industrial unions.

Cheered on by big city journalists, Labor thought they couldn’t lose. I thought they couldn’t lose. One of the few people I know who called it right was my accountant friend.

My friend said “you cannot win an election by promising new taxes”. All his clients, all his friends, thought Labor would win, they thought everyone else would vote for Labor. But they had no intention of personally voting for a candidate who they thought would make their own life more difficult.

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August 18, 2020 6:17 am

Democrats Clean Energy Climate Policy follows Australia and Germany’s Failed Climate Plan – Higher energy costs for Americans are eminent along with worldwide ecological degradation and human right abuses mining for wind, solar, and EV materials. The Democrats’ Climate Policy is cloning the disastrous efforts first tried by Australia and Germany that has produced the highest costs of electricity in the world for residents. With America representing a minuscule five percent of the world’s population the Democrats remain oblivious to the United Nations warnings about the negative consequences of the shift toward exotic minerals and metals for wind, solar, and EV batteries, which includes worldwide ecological degradation and atrocious human rights abuses. https://www.cfact.org/2020/07/09/democrats-climate-policy-follows-germanys-failed-plan/

August 18, 2020 8:16 am

Both of them look like they have hydrocephalus.

August 18, 2020 11:01 am

Watching from afar I’d say the silent majority has this in the bag. The polls and the media can be counted on to tell you the exact opposite of what will happen (they do it everyday), and then the Dems will explode in utter amazement at their loss just like UK Labour, and the ALP.

……says bloke on the internet.

William Astley
Reply to  Climate believer
August 18, 2020 12:47 pm

I do not have a prediction. I have a spooky coincidence which will be more interesting if something odd happens at the Dem. Convention.

There were two science fiction books published about 15 years ago, wartech books, that had a plot scenario which is up to this point… exactly what we are now experiencing. The two books started with the same plot scenario and then take two very different paths.

Both books start with a worldwide dangerous virus outbreak, that started in China… and spread around the world. Oddly in both books, China started the virus attack, by releasing a virus in China. In the first book, which I did not read, China released a virus in their country, to defeat the US and stop all wars.

It was speculated that the first book was written by a Chinese think tank as it was over the top pro-China and anti-US. The second it was speculated was written by an American think tank. The books had technical detail, if I remember correctly both had a US currency collapse and a China/US economic war, in addition to the use of advanced virus technology that is now possible.

I read the second book, after reading an interesting article that discussed the virus technology and the issues raised in both books. There is an outbreak of internal fighting in China, in the second book, and that is where advanced technology virus attacks are used.

In the second book, the Republicans are in power and the Democrats are acting strangely and the action happens just before the US election. In the second book, there is a strange incident with the Democrat presidential candidate, that is noticed by the public and senior US intelligence.

What is interesting, is the US election does not happen (in the second book) as a right-wing Brazilian leader, discovers that an anti-malaria drug stops the virus. That starts so much internal fighting in the US, that the election is postponed…..

And then something happens which results in the cancelation of the US election.

Brazil is using HCQ to both treat covid patients and as a covid prophylactic. So, if HCQ/AQZ works and that information gets out… it is theoretically possible that the US election could be postponed.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-brazil-hydroxychlo/special-report-bolsonaro-bets-miraculous-cure-for-covid-19-can-save-brazil-and-his-life-idUSKBN249396

Reply to  William Astley
August 18, 2020 1:44 pm

That is pretty spooky….. have you got the titles of those books?

William Astley
Reply to  Climate believer
August 18, 2020 4:11 pm

I do not. However, it would be possible to find the article that discussed the two books.

At the time I read the second book, I knew nothing about viruses or HCQ and hence thought that part of the plot (a malaria drug that stops the virus ) was plot manipulation to move the plot along.

The details concerning the US currency collapse were weak, in both books. This is something 20 years ago, some thought would be inevitable.

The second book also alluded to a population deficiency which when corrected, stopped the virus from spreading. The second book did not however explain what the heck the deficiency was which I found annoying.

Most of the virus fighting in the second book happens in China due to fractional fighting. I also thought that was plot manipulation, as China always seemed to speak with one voice, twenty years ago. No infighting, evidence.

These recent high profile criticisms of Xi are signs the Xi ‘team’ is started to get push back. Naturally it seems all powerful teams cheat and steal when there are no checks and balances.

Xi is shooting the messenger, a retired, long term communist believer, for speaking up for the people. That kind of mistake makes Xi look a despot, blind to reality, a leader with greedy corrupt ‘friends’.

https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/08/17/chinese-professor-disciplined-for-calling-president-xi-a-mafia-boss/

Retired Chinese professor Cai Xia, formerly a political science teacher at the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Party School, was “disciplined” for her criticism of President Xi Jinping by calling him a “mob boss

Tom Abbott
August 18, 2020 12:50 pm

From the article: “He [Biden] served in an Obama administration that oversaw a historic surge in American oil and gas production, as shale went mainstream.”

The implication being that the shale revolution was directed by the Obama-Biden White House.

The truth is Biden and Obama did everything in their power to stifle the fossil fuel industry.

Phil Jourdan
August 18, 2020 4:55 pm

I would not say he is copying their loss except maybe he is. He is a known plagiarizer, but I doubt he remembers what happened in 2019