Woke net zero targets will weaken us

Net zero emissions is the public policy embodiment of corporate bullsh*t. Anyone who has worked for a large corporation has sat through mind-numbing Powerpoint slideshows, with liberal helpings of buzzwords like "synergy", "thought leadership" and "data-driven".

I haven't worked as a corporate slave for a while but I am sure "Net Zero" (or the latest offshoot "Mission Zero") now appears as a template stamp on every slide.

Net zero is the ultimate corporate buzzword and that's why so many woke corporations have fallen for it. Many small businesses, who understand the day to day realities of meeting payroll with cash, and can't use accountants to fudge a P&L, remain opposed.

Many buzzwords are harmless, and when working as a corporate robot you can just mouth lip service to them, laugh at the latest Dilbert cartoon, and get on with life. But net zero emissions is not a harmless buzzword.

If the Australian Government formally adopts a net zero emissions target it will weaponise the bureaucracy against any major job creating, nation building project in this country. The next time someone wants to build an Adani mine, Canberra will ask how will you OFFSET the emissions. The next time someone wants to build a dam (yes dams create emissions), Canberra will ask how will you OFFSET the emissions. The next time someone wants to build an airstrip on a Great Barrier Reef island to open a resort, Canberra will ask how will you OFFSET the emissions.

It is important here to pause and understand what net zero means beyond the corporate hype. As the Emissions Minister Angus Taylor has said, net zero doesn't mean you can't create carbon emissions, but you have to offset those emissions to get back to zero.

This means people who build mines, grow food or construct an airstrip will have to pay other people to plant trees or do something else to offset their emissions. It costs money for people to plant trees and do other things to reduce emissions. When pioneering nation builders have to pay for these things, that is a tax on on their project and the jobs it will create. Net zero means a big tax on developing our nation.

There will be bigger government but fewer productive businesses.

And that is why it hurts regional Australia more than anywhere else. To grow our country towns, we need people to build dams, mines and airports. Compared to the cities, who already have these things, we will be at a permanent disadvantage.

Now some net zero advocates will say that we will invent things that will make carbon emission reductions free. The latest fad is hydrogen. This idea breaches the first law of economics: there is no such thing as a free lunch.

I support us investing in hydrogen and other technologies. As the Resources Minister I developed Australia's first National Hydrogen Strategy.

I do not support gambling with people's jobs on the hope that an uncertain thing turns out. You don't take on a mortgage with the plan to pay it back by winning the lotto.

The net zero plan being presented at the moment is not a plan, it is a prayer. It is a big prayer that hydrogen will one day fall down from heaven like manna. The Prime Minister may very well believe in miracles, but I don't think we should be gambling people's jobs based on the existence of them.

The other major reason we should reject net zero is that it is a massive distraction against the major threat to our country: China.

President Xi Jinping is not even attending the Glasgow conference. In fairness to him, I am not sure how he could keep a straight face while the west commits collective economic suicide.

China does not care about climate change action. They are the world's largest emitter, they have not done anything to cut their carbon emissions and useful idiots in the west want people to take China's net zero target by 2060 seriously. We can not trust China to keep their promises under trade agreements, we can not trust China to do a proper investigation of the origins of the coronavirus, but we can, apparently, trust China to handicap their own industry and get to net zero! Good luck with that.

While we have been distracted with the net zero madness, this week China demonstrated the world's first nuclear-capable, hypersonic missile. According to the Financial Times, the missile test “caught US intelligence by surprise.”

China now has space nukes but they can't match us on plans to reach net zero.

Europe has been one of the few places in the world manfully trying to reach net zero. How has that worked out for them? Europe has banned fracking, closed coal and nuclear power stations and has built lots of wind turbines. Now a wind drought has hit and some are laughably calling this "global stilling" and blaming it on climate change too.

European energy prices have soared, there are huge lines at petrol stations and factories have closed. Europe's energy needs have been outsourced to an authoritarian Russian regime that supplies them gas when Putin decides to. And, by the way, Putin has not committed to attend Glasgow yet either.

In a comical irony, basic food items have run out because of shortages of carbon dioxide! You need gas to make carbon dioxide, which is used as a refrigerant gas essential for the transportation of food from the country to the city. The gas price surge has forced the UK government to bail out its major producer of carbon dioxide, CF Fertilisers. The UK is at serious risk of running out of food for the first time since World War II.

We may very well be on the cusp of World War III. That is not something I want but our top defence officials told us this was a risk when they justified the ripping up of a submarines contract with the French, and instead get nuclear submarines from the US and UK.

Thanks to COVID, Australia has the biggest government debt since World War II, our power prices have gone from the cheapest in the world to some of the most expensive and now we are turning our back on our indigenous sources of coal and gas, to instead rely on imports of solar panels and wind turbines from ... China! You can't make this stuff up.

Net zero emissions will make it harder to defend Australia.

There is one final reason for the Liberal National Party to oppose net zero emissions. Over the past decade, the LNP has rightfully stood against the radical carbon emissions cuts that would weaken Australia's economy and security. We have won every election fought on this basis - Labor were only returned in 2010 on the back of country independents, whose voters clearly did not support a carbon tax. And when we went soft on these issues at the 2016 election, we came within one seat of losing.

At the last election, Angus Taylor, Josh Frydenberg, Scott Morrison, me and many others warned that Labor's proposed 45 per cent reduction in carbon emissions would wreck the Australian economy. Two years later we are set to turn around and say, actually, it will all be fine. And, in fact we got it so wrong, that we will make lots of money from a 100 per cent cut in emissions! Sorry about that Bill Shorten.

Kevin Rudd lost his Prime Ministership the day he dropped his carbon tax scheme. He did so because the polling told him it had become unpopular. The problem was a year before he had said that "climate change was the greatest moral challenge of our time". Rudd never regained the trust of the Australian people.

The LNP is looking over this "Rudd precipice". Will we stand by our principles and the people that gave up their free time and money to support us? Or will we become the conservative version of Kevin Rudd, an empty, poll driven kite, that blows with the wind rather than stands against it when it is right to do so?

The most pathetic example of the west's decline this week was the House of Windsor's cringe-worthy diatribes against world leaders. Some leaders have the gall to prioritise the development of their poor countries (that the UK once ruled and left poor), instead of returning to the mother country to kiss the ring at Glasgow. The only reason the small British isles off the coast of Europe ended up ruling the world was because they were the first to harness the energy of coal through the Industrial Revolution. The Poms now lecture others that are using that same coal to bring their people out of poverty.

If only we could harness such hypocrisy and turn it into electricity, climate change would be solved. Thanks to climate change activists there is an endless supply of it.

The monarchy has gone woke just like every other corporation. These people agree with Kevin Rudd and view climate change as a "moral" challenge. For the secular west it has replaced religion. In this way, climate change activism has become the new "white man's burden". As the enlightened people of the world, it has fallen on the rich, white nations of the world to correct the sins of their former colonies.

This is how wokeism is far from harmless. Lots of woke obsessions are complete BS, but their advocates have a puritan streak which makes woke policies, that on first blush appear to be just a joke, a punishing reality. That is why, as someone else pointed out recently, everything woke turns to ...

The net zero emissions BS will turn out no different.