By Vinay Kolhatkar
“It seems to me that the widespread acceptance of the global warming dogma has become one of the main, most costly and most undemocratic public policy mistakes in generations. The previous one was communism.”
Vaclav Klaus, October 19, 2010
Klaus was the president of the Czech Republic from March 2003 to March 2013. This was perhaps the only time a head of government, while in power, was openly defying a narrative that has become so entrenched in culture as a scientifically proven fact that no other head of government has been able to confront it head on—to call it openly a dogma.
In this essay, we assume that the reader is already aware of the logic and evidence opposing the climate change narrative. If you are, however, convinced of the climate change narrative’s scientific credentials, please refer to the Editor’s Note at the end of the essay about what the movement actually claims, then read Watts Up With That, the Galileo Movement, or the U.S. Senate Minority Report, and then make up your own mind.
Scientific truths are not gleaned by a majority vote but by theory and evidence.
The Australian Suicide
On Saturday, May 21, 2022, Australia held its triannual federal election. As with most democracies, Australia’s politics, too, has been dominated by two major parties—typically, one, a left-leaning, union-backed party that has steadily increased its support of legislative climate activism, free trade agreements, and woke issues—the Australian Labor Party, and equally typically, the other—a religious (in Australia, Christian leaning) conservative party, the “Liberal Party,” which has progressively deviated from the classical liberal principles still expressed as foundational on its website. The Liberals have been in a coalition with the National Party, a strong regional party, which has remained conservative and somewhat protectionist and has constrained the Liberals from overcommitting on legislative climate activism, to save rural jobs. Together, they are the Liberal National Coalition (the Coalition).
The electoral result confounded even the most seasoned of political pundits. Even as poll booths closed at 6pm on the eastern coast, no one predicted what was about to transpire. By 9pm, it was all over. The climate change narrative had won, decimating the party in governance. Independent candidates stole votes even from the left-leaning Labor Party, but their steal from the Liberals was far bigger and ubiquitous, and voters’ second and third preferences sealed the election for Labor, which won less than 33% of the primary vote, a historic low. Independent and minor party candidates won over 30% of the primary vote, a historic high well above their trend line.
The Victor
The new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (pronounced al-bah-nay–see, but the anglicized version ending in nee-zee is ubiquitous in Australia) was sworn in on Monday morning, less than 48 hours after poll booths closed. We don’t need about 12 weeks of procedures like in the U.S. to let a new head of government take office after an election that isn’t disputed.
Albanese grew up in a housing commission flat, raised by a single mother who was on a disability pension. Like when the U.S. populace elected a person of color to the presidency, this was worth at least noting, if not celebrating. He is also the first person of a non-anglicized surname to assume the highest office in the land. His new Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, is a very articulate and intelligent long-term Labor warrior, half-Asian by descent, and openly gay. Tick a few more boxes. The two are close friends. She, too, was sworn in on Monday morning.
Within hours, Albanese and Wong were on a plane bound for Tokyo, to meet Fumio Kishida, Joe Biden, and Narendra Modi for a Quad meet, a forum of four democracies (Japan, the U.S., India, and Australia) to discuss “security matters” in the Pacific—specifically, China’s unbridled ambition and dominance of trade.
But, on election night itself, in his acceptance speech, rising above the shouts of “Albo, Albo,” as he’s popularly known, Albanese announced his first policy initiative—that he will end “the climate wars.” Will he? Can he?
The Climate Wars and the “Net Zero Emissions” Game
Here’s what the Climate Council says of the phrase net zero emissions:
Net zero emissions refers to achieving an overall balance between greenhouse gas emissions produced and greenhouse gas emissions taken out of the atmosphere.
We already have the technology we need to accelerate towards net zero emissions, including replacing coal- and gas-fired power stations with cheap, clean and reliable renewable energy backed by storage technologies.
The Coalition did promise net zero emissions by the year 2050. But, within the Coalition, there are three cadres of politicians:
- Those who have discovered and are prepared to say openly that human activity does not cause global warming, that human beings cannot control Earth’s surface temperature, and that current trends are not alarming.
- Those who have discovered the truth but will pretend, for political purposes, that they accept “the science”—meaning actually that they accept the real science, not climate alarmism, but let the conversation meander in a way that it can be taken as though they accept the alarmist assertions as real science. This group will enact minimal measures so as not to derail the economy while pretending “action on climate.”
- Those who truly believe everything the mainstream media says of human emissions and global warming.
Prominent Liberal and a former prime minister, Tony Abbott, was amongst the second lot. Only when he was out of politics, Abbott came out of the closet and started speaking truth to power. It appears to me that it’s likely that Scott Morrison, who, as Treasurer, made a speech celebrating coal in Parliament, was playing the same game. But, some of the prominent Liberals, including former PM Malcolm Turnbull and former leader John Hewson, appear to be genuinely convinced by the mainstream narrative.
But, as we said in our open letter to Scott Morrison in April 2019, the public isn’t fooled when actions do not match the rhetoric.
Craig Kelly, a former liberal MP was in the thinly populated first group. He became stridently forthright and vocal, setting out detailed charts, facts, and arguments. He garnered a huge following on Facebook. He was banned by Facebook for … you guessed it, “misleading information.” He was thrown out of the Liberal Party. Wikipedia labelled him a “conspiracy theorist.” He was silenced. But the whispers kept growing louder.
Leading up to the election, the internal conflict was too obvious. The pro-Left media made the most of it. Some National Party colleagues openly contradicted the “net zero by 2050” stance, which Morrison committed Australia to at the 26th climate conference in Glasgow in 2021 (COP26). During the campaign, one Coalition candidate said there was “wiggle room” in the commitment to net zero, calling it a “flexible plan” that was not legislated.
Later, Senator Matt Canavan, a former Minister of Resources, bluntly told the state-owned ABC that the Morrison government had not set a formal emissions reduction trajectory and had no intention of “following a linear path like the Labor party” and further, that:
The other thing to say is the net zero thing is all sort of dead anyway. Boris Johnson said he is pausing the net zero commitment, Germany is building coal and gas infrastructure, Italy’s reopening coal-fired power plants. It’s all over bar the shouting here.
We’re talking about something that is 28 years away. What will happen in 28 years’ time, or the policies that will happen in 10 or 20 years, I think, should be up to the Australian people in 10 or 20 years, some of who might not even be voting [now].
Meanwhile, Morrison announced a $70m hydrogen hub for Townsville, Queensland, and kept contradicting his forthright colleagues in the hope of winning over both sides of the climate war.
Labor’s policy, however, besides innumerable subsidies and grand plans, was to see Australia re-join key trading partners in their ambition to 2030, like Canada (with its similar economic base) at 40 – 45%, South Korea at 40% and Japan at 46%. These are the reduction targets, to keep Australia on track for zero by 2050.
The Coalition’s plan was to “kick the ball down the road” long enough to buy time. But without explicit confrontation, indeed, appeasement of the global warming narrative, the facts had no unsilenced champion and more people got converted to the falsehood.
The Greens
The Greens are known as the third largest political party in Australia (counting the Coalition as one, albeit technically they are two parties with an agreement to contest as one). The utopian but misguided Greens are fully committed to subsidizing inefficient, unreliable energy sources and heavily penalizing, and eventually banning, fossil fuels.
They explicitly say so (emphasis mine):
Net zero by 2050 is not a climate target, it’s a death sentence.
We need to dramatically reduce emissions by 2030, or it’s too late.
That’s why we’re calling on Scott Morrison to put in place a formal legislated plan to reduce Australia’s emissions by 75% by 2030 and phase out coal and gas. Our future depends on it.
In the 2022 election, the Greens’ primary vote increased nationally by 1.9% to 12.3%.
The Teals and the “Daddy’s Money Businessman”
In the Australian political map, the leftist Labor is shown red (how apt). The Liberals (the Coalition) are shown in blue, but they have long given up on classical liberalism.
Teal is a color halfway between green and blue. 22 new independents stood for the lower house, calling themselves “small l” liberals with a climate agenda, wearing teal outfits and jewelry (19 of the 22 were women, calling out Morrison’s insensitivity to victims of sexual misconduct, and expressing support for “gender equity”).
But the Teals were not conservative. Teal Zoe Daniels was accused of anti-Semitism after she signed the “do better on Palestine” letter. Simon Holmes à Court, who funded her, was also accused of Holocaust slurs.
Seems to me that the cloak was teal, but they were Green Lite in their philosophy.
These independents were funded in the millions by a businessman invested in renewables. Simon Holmes à Court is the son (and one of four children who each inherited part of the estate) of Australia’s first billionaire Robert Holmes à Court, a self-made entrepreneur who died of a heart attack at 53, in 1990.
Climate 200 is an Australian fund that “aims to donate money to election candidates who want to advance climate policy, to more effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the country.”
In 2022, Simon Holmes à Court relaunched Climate 200, the fundraising group he founded just before the May 2019 federal election with support from 35 investors, including tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes (who is also committed to undermining fossil fuels).
More on Holmes à Court and his strategy is here.
Wow—it must be a thrilling ride for non-celebrity political virgins—Billionaires will help you unseat long-established political careers and become an MP … a senator even.
A Win for the Billionaires
Read More at https://www.thesavvystreet.com/on-election-day-australia-commits-climate-suicide/
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Just to be clear…
80%+ of Australians did not vote for any significant climate agenda.
.
The ‘winning’ party, that won with just 32% of the primary vote (vs a 36% primary vote for their main opponents) campaigned on a platform of 30 policy points – non of which was labelled ‘climate change’.
Climate change actions was a 2nd/3rd tier aspect to just two of those 30 policy points.
.
Climate Change was an election platform in 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2019 and each and every time LABOR lost.
.
Labor campaigned on lowering the price of power – only to throw up it’s hands in their first week to claim they can nothing about increasing prices, despite their reticence to implement a trigger provided by the previous government to ensure that gas is allocated for onshore needs rather than export.
In that very first week energy providers announced an average increase of 10%.
Not to mention the fact that Australia is committed to ‘net zero carbon’ by 2050 – which (based on 2015) means a total reduction of just 13% across the next 28 years.
Not committed at all, no formal commitment entered into, PM Morrison referred to “an aspirational goal” and based on development of new technology and no damage to the economy.
“We don’t need about 12 weeks of procedures like in the U.S.”
To be clear, the actual date of the Presidential election in 2020 was December 14th. In the U.S. the people do not directly elect the President. The “election day” in November is to select Electors who will then vote for the President, which they did on December 14th. However, those elector votes are not counted until Jan 6th. So 2 weeks from the actual vote count until the new President is sworn in.
Technically, yes, but electors almost never defy the will of the people. And over 3 weeks to count elector votes? I am not critical, just stating the facts here. Australia is too fast and the U.S. too slow.
“Australia Commits Climate Suicide”
Well, it’s nice to have some company
In many State elections, the Liberals had more extreme climate policy than Labor. Federally there was little difference between Labor and Liberal. There is no conservative party in Australia at the moment. That may change, but there is little evidence.
As a consequence of Labor and Liberal policy, a week after the election, our electricity and gas grids started there inevitable collapse.
And still the woke egged on by a few rich investors are calling for more Renewables to prop up our failing base load power. Australians cannot learn. We are too arrogant as a whole.
Step 1 – Albo announces Australia climate capital of the world
Step 2 – Albo cries out “Dude, where’s my gas”, as he pursues a gas reservation policy on local gas producers.
It’s okay Albo can crawl to Adam “the Nutcase” Bandt to bring Scarborough Gas Project online.
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/mcgowan-defends-scarborough-gas-project-for-lowering-emissions-20220525-p5aoh8
Australia welcome to the ‘Third World’. California has elected success Democratic and Republican “Climate Change” advocates (snake oil salesmen) and the result is telling. Shortage of electricity due to lack of power generation. [CA gets over 50% of its electric power from other States.] As a result, we’ve had success years of power cut backs – ‘brown outs’ and ‘black outs’. Continuing on this trajectory will accelerate the move of industry and people out of the State. Inconsistent power is not the answer to creating jobs, higher incomes, and reducing emissions. The number one major product flying of the shelves at Home Depot is back up [Honda] electricity generators powered by gasoline or diesel. When they take away those, people will just buy wood which will pollute the atmosphere even more. The ‘Climate Change’ zealots will create even more pollution because people will always have an alternative, albeit an expensive one.
Regarding the Vaclav Klaus quote, it’s telling that the same people who pushed communism before, are pushing the Climate Emergency now.
One thing that needs to be pointed out, is that the party being called “conservative” in this article would be to the left of most Democrats a few years ago.
Yes, Gramscian Marxists now instead of Leninists. But Marxists all the same. Neo-Marxists we call them (that includes Cultural Marxism).
Remember Jung’s Psychic Epidemics?
Indeed, it is becoming ever more obvious that it is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer but man himself who is man’s greatest danger to man, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes.
The supreme danger which threatens individuals as well as whole nations is a psychic danger. Reason has proved itself completely powerless, precisely because its arguments have an effect only on the conscious mind and not on the unconscious.
The greatest danger of all comes from the masses, in whom the effects of the unconscious pile up cumulatively and the reasonableness of the conscious mind is stifled. Every mass organization is a latent danger just as much as a heap of dynamite is. It lets loose effects which no man wants and no man can stop.
It is therefore in the highest degree desirable that a knowledge of psychology should spread so that men can understand the source of the supreme dangers that threaten them. Not by arming to the teeth, each for itself, can the nations defend themselves in the long run from the frightful catastrophes of modern war. The heaping up of arms is itself a call to war. Rather must they recognize those psychic conditions under which the unconscious [tsunami-like] bursts the dykes of consciousness and overwhelms it.
Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self
Lots of great discussion about this article. Much of it is about who and/or what is to blame for Australians voting for an economic and social suicide pact based on the fraudulent CAGW scam. I am not overstating the malfeasance of those who keep perpetrating this nonsense as too much time and too many failed predictions have passed at this point for any of the main proponents to be ignorant of the fact that what they are predicting is ridiculous and not scientifically supported.
The discussions remind me of the Swiss cheese model of failure in industrial process engineering. Major failures in industrial processes that have oversized consequences are often seen as the culmination of many small failures that, on their own, would have minor or no adverse consequences. We all experience similar outcomes in our own lives. Being stranded on an unused desert highway with a flat tire and no water, food or ability to call for help could be such an outcome. Any number of small errors if they had not occurred might make the event benign but if all occur together you might end up food for the buzzards. The list of small things that could prevent tragedy includes checking the tire pressure before travel, ensuring an inflated spare and tools are in the vehicle, stocking food and water just in case, using a more populated route, ensuring a charged cell phone and telling others your route and when you are expecting to arrive.
I suspect this Swiss cheese model is a reasonable way to look at our current catastrophe of logic that could pull down our modern functioning civilizations. The list of all the failings that must be in place for us to get to our current sad state is long: failing and unskilled political leadership, entrenched unintelligent bureaucrats without accountability or adequate oversight, a failing academic system that no longer works within a scientific framework but rather is driven by financial and professional incentives which have nothing to do with science, a bevy of massively wealthy autocrats who can afford to buy policies that are self serving but bad for middle class and poor, an education system that is captured by socially progressive nonsense and has long ago lost interest in teaching critical thinking and basic intellectual skills, a public that is fascinated by entertainment and bored by real facts and which votes emotionally for every next shiny thing, a press corps and social media that are all about selling advertising and currying favour with political celebrities, and finally, decades of success that made it easy to live well with only modest effort and little critical thought.
In short there is a lot of blame to share around. And, just as in the industrial model, there are many starting points where a bit of effort and correction could change the course of history dramatically without having to fix every error up front. If we allow our civilization to collapse because of an entirely false belief in a climate catastrophe caused by our own good fortune then we will all be to blame.
re: “the logic and evidence opposing the climate change narrative”
Yep, just like the “logic and evidence” opposing the evolution narrative.
And the “logic and evidence” opposing the heliocentric solar system narrative.
The whole thing reminds me of RAKE. Clive standing in for Australia.
The Liberals made the mistake of not offering an alternative to the lunatic left. In fact, tried to compete with them on their home issues. Stupid. Also pandered to the covid 19 bed wetters too much as well. Hopefully, they will learn from this and stop trying to be trendies. Because that is all they were doing.
Also, for a single-article analysis of the big picture, there’s “Climategate: history’s message” by Mencius Moldbug.