OPINION
Every so often, in their increasingly deranged efforts to scare the pants off us, the Climate Cult inadvertently publish reports that make the sceptical case for us.
As I wrote recently, a recent report by Net Zero Australia estimated the cost of merely transforming Australia’s transmission grid to cope with renewables at $1.5 trillion. The total cost of “Net Zero” would, they concede with blithe optimism, be around $9 trillion.
This, remember, is from a body that advocates Net Zero.
The latest scaremongering effort puts that cost into stark perspective.
Treasury projections included in Thursday’s Intergenerational Report will highlight the long-term threat from climate change to the nation’s economy and budget if global action is insufficient to meet targets set out in the Paris Agreement.
If global temperatures increase beyond 2C above pre-industrial levels, by 2063 more frequent and severe natural disasters as a result of climate change will drive a three-fold increase in commonwealth spending on its disaster recovery program, the IGR will show.
The direct impacts of higher temperatures on how we work are just one of the channels through which climate change will impact labour productivity, but one which could be significant,” the report will say.
“If global temperatures were to increase by up to 3C or over 4C, without adaptive changes to current ways of working, Australia’s aggregate labour productivity levels could decrease by 0.2 to 0.8 per cent by 2063.
Now, bear in mind that “up to 3C or over 4C” is an absolute worst-case scenario in the IPCC’s modelling, which even the IPCC admits is extremely unlikely.
Still, even in the worst case, what would that come to in dollars?
“This is a significant economic cost, reducing economic output over this period by between $135bn and $423bn in today’s dollars, through the direct impacts of higher temperatures on labour productivity.”
So, doing nothing would be cheaper than the lunacy of “Net Zero”? Especially when “over this period” means that the annual cost will be a paltry $3.7-$10.5 billion. Which is nearly 1/900th of the cost of “Net Zero”.
Because, in a “Net Zero” world, Australia will not just have broken its bank spending the equivalent of its entire WWI military spend, every year for forty years, but be poorer than ever. That’s because one of the nation’s major export earners will be slashed.
If the world moves more quickly and successfully limits global warming to 1.5C, demand for coal as a fossil fuel would be just 1 per cent of current levels in four decades’ time.
Coal exports bring in as much as $100 billion every year to the Australian economy. Say goodbye to that. Say goodbye, too, to the iron ore boom, if steel production collapses — as it must, in a coal-free world.
And say hello to vast expanses of toxic waste.
In contrast, global demand for lithium in this scenario would be more than eight times higher, Treasury estimates.
The Australian
Which, even assuming Australia maintains its share of lithium production, would barely offset the loss from coal. Then there’s the catastrophic environmental cost of lithium mining and refining — activities which the Treasurer is emphatic Australia should do. This means entire lakes of toxic horror polluting the outback.
But, hey, at least they’re saving the planet.