Opinion
Sooner or later, even the most demented, smooth-brained Climate Cultist has a discomforting collision with reality. Across the world, governments and corporations have been quietly backing away from their “climate commitments”, as they realise, firstly, how ruinously expensive they are, and, secondly, how utterly useless.
Car rental giant Hertz is selling off its entire EV fleet. Apple is dumping its billon-dollar EV program, while GM, Honda, Toyota, Volvo and other auto giants are scrapping their EV plans. Governments, including the US, are scaling back or dumping ambitious EV targets.
The groundswell of harsh reality is so obvious that even Australia’s lamentable Climate Change and Energy Minister, Chris “Boofhead” Bowen is being forced to pull his head out of his deep green clacker.
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen says the government’s softening of vehicle efficiency standards is not a concession but a “result of very extensive consultation”.
“We’ve kept the same level of ambition in relation to emissions reduction and we’ve kept the same level of ambition when it comes to choices for Australian motorists,” he told ABC TV.
What he hasn’t kept are the targets. Because they were ludicrous and everyone knew it.
Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen has walked away from Labor’s target to have 89 per cent of new car sales electric by 2030, casting doubt on the government’s green agenda.
After The Australian revealed Mr Bowen’s electric vehicle strategy was on track to fail with government departmental officials predicting fewer than a third of new car sales would be battery operated by 2030, the Labor frontbencher claimed there was no target.
“We don’t have a particular EV target,” Mr Bowen said on Wednesday morning.
“We have a determination to give Australians more choices. So many Australians come up to me in the street and say, I’d like my next car to be an EV but I’m not really seeing the range of choices that are affordable.
“And they’re right because there are many more affordable EVs that are available in other countries that aren’t available here because we don’t have efficiency standards.”
By “affordable”, Bowen apparently means “a lunchbox that costs as much as a gigantic SUV”. The Nissan Leaf in the US costs around $40,0000 Australian. Even the ludicrous two-seater SmartEQ Fortwo, with a whopping 17.6kw (23HP), costs nearly $40k. Although you can get a Chinese electric clown car for $7 grand, although with its 15kw (20HP) of power, you’d probably do better with Fred Flintstone’s two feet.
Meanwhile, only Labor could, in the middle of a critical shortage of gas, lobby to cut gas production.
Labor great Kim Beazley, two former Labor premiers and two former Labor ministers have urged Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek to block Woodside Energy’s plans to extend the life of its North West Shelf project, in a move that underscores the growing divisions within Labor over conflicting industrial and environmental ambitions.
Mr Beazley – a former deputy prime minister and opposition leader who until 2022 was the governor of Western Australia – is one of several high-profile Australians to sign a letter to Ms Plibersek calling for her to intervene and prevent the project from going ahead.
And you just know they’re going to drag the Oogabooga magic into it.
The signatories argue that the extension of the plant’s life was likely to have “profound and irreversible” impacts on the ancient rock art nearby.
The Australian
Can’t go making the rainbow serpent angry, after all.
Just stick a fork in us — we’re done.