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The Net Zero lemmings rush

By Viv Forbes - posted Tuesday, 28 November 2023


Australia's ALP/Green government and their media mates are using subsidies, taxes and propaganda in a suicidal attempt to move the whole country to 82% "renewable" energy by 2030 and "Net Zero Emissions by 2050". Canny Aussies are buying diesel generators.

If they persist in their rush to Net Zero, we have a few "Net Zero" suggestions for them.

1. "Net Zero Immigration"

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Every migrant adds to Australia's emissions by consuming food, electricity, transport fuels and housing. Thus, to reach net zero emissions, the rest of us must be rationed further to cope with these additional emitters.

2. "Net Zero Tourists".

Every tourist adds to our emissions for transport, food, electricity and accommodation. To achieve net zero emissions in the face of millions of immigrants, tourists and foreign students will need slick carbon accounting, or penury for the rest of us. Victoria's Dan Andrews was accidentally right for once - he cancelled the Commonwealth Games.

3.Net-zero growth of welfare rolls and the bureaucracy.

Net Zero will not allow us to import hundreds of foreign workers for our mines, factories and farms while we maintain battalions of bureaucrats shuffling files in air-conditioned ivory towers in the capital cities. Nor can we accept growing armies of able-bodied idlers sipping green smoothies at the beach.

We must get all healthy Aussies into real jobs.

4. Net-zero-growth in locked-up land.

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Wind and solar energy are sterilising huge and growing areas of land to produce their intermittent electricity. This greatly reduces the land available to grazing, forestry, fishing, exploration and mining.

It's time to call a halt.

There must be net-zero increase in land devoted to national parks, marine parks, world heritage playgrounds, locked-up black homelands or carbon credit and green energy wastelands.

5. Net zero lies about electric vehicles.

They have a fanciful plan to replace our petrol and diesel cars, trucks, dozers and tractors with fleets of yet-to-be-built battery or hydrogen powered vehicles. Where are the fast-refuelling stations for them all? And who has counted the extra emissions to mine and refine the metals for batteries, electric motors, turbines and power lines? And where will we get the extra electricity for overnight re-charging of battery-powered vehicles as coal generators close, the sun sets and the wind drops? (They have discovered the answer in ever-green California – electric powered trucks are being recharged with diesel generators.)

6. No Subsidies for Hydrogen

In this unplanned rush to all-green energy some extol the coming of hydrogen powered vehicles. To produce green hydrogen requires large amounts of electricity plus nine tonnes of water for every tonne of hydrogen produced by electrolysis. Some even think that it makes sense to use large amounts of electricity to desalinate sea water to make green hydrogen. Such a process is not even "net zero". It is hugely energy negative. Obviously the main goal is to harvest green subsidies or votes.

7. No Subsidies for "Pumped Hydro"

Greens think taxpayers should fund giant dams and turbines to generate electricity when green energy is on strike – at night, on cloudy days and during wind droughts.

Does that mean that Greens believe we can steal water from every river system for green energy stabilisation while reducing the water stored for towns, farms, and orchards?

Let's have the first dam on the Franklyn River in Tasmania (they want to be "the battery of the nation").

8. Full Accounting of all Emissions

Who is counting all the emissions being generated to manufacture, transport and erect an ugly intrusive spider-web of roads and power lines to collect intermittent solar and wind energy from mountains, flats, seas and roof-tops? Where is the carbon and dollar accounting for the metals, concrete and hydrocarbon fuels that are needed?

We must also count the emissions to manufacture and erect all their planned green energy stabilisation schemes involving pumped hydro and giant batteries. All of this is a dash into the unknown without a coherent plan of how it will all work, or its full cost.

9. We need a Climate-Exit Referendum.

We are locked into never-ending climate conferences and all the costs and eco-babel generated by Paris Climate Agreement.

They want us locked into 15 minute cities with bicycles, walking shoes, oat-milk coffee and fake meat burgers while they jet off to a new well-fed tourist destination every year. We have copped these annual climate-fests for 26 years now. The last one catered for about 40,000 delegates and hangers-on for 2 weeks of talk-fest that achieved NOTHING useful (as usual). Even Saint Greta Thunberg said that COP27 was a scam.

Let's have a Clexit (Climate Exit) Referendum and abandon all liabilities under the Kyoto and Paris Climate Agreements.

10. The Net Zero Prize

Our reward for reaching our 2030 Net Zero Emissions targets will be a precarious population with industry operating on the whims of the weather and an angry, urbanised, locked-down population faced with food, fuel and electricity rationing.

There is no global warming crisis, but Blackouts Bowen (Australia's Minister for Climate Panics and Zero Energy) is determined to create an electricity crisis. Power grid failure will be followed quickly by failure of food and water supplies to cities. Hopefully Canberra, (Australia's Green Capital) will be the first to suffer.

The rest of Australia must vote NO to this dangerous Net Zero delusion.

 

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About the Author

Viv Forbes is a geologist and farmer who lives on a farm on the Bremer River.

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