Woodside’s 2050 aide-memoire: fake ‘net-zero’ is another scam for the political classes

Even by Homo sapiens standards, net-zero's some ego-trip. Scientist-turned-influencer Tim Flannery preaches, woke climate-leadership can "science" it. Andrew Forrest bragged globally - green hydrogen and real zero . Fellow-mogul Mike Cannon-Brookes is net-zero's Double Bay Jesus.

Notwithstanding recent US/EU emissions-reductions, global emissions-charts won't bend-it-like-Beckham. As blockbuster UN-IPCC reports concede, emissions tend to rise, proportional to population, consumption, GDP.

How could (and why would?) we earthlings ever "net" to zero? With eight billions battering biodiversity via land-clearing, logging, habitat destruction, water-splurging and species invasions/extinctions.

Sure, those US NOAA gauges on Hawaii Mauna Loa testify the global CO₂ spike. Not much do mega-populous US and India/China care – coal-burning amigos generating 50% of all CO₂ emissions. No surprise – they're also top five economies/manufacturers. Bowen's bare-minimum net-zero is science-fiction.

Sure, Australia can choose to go long on localised renewables or Chinese-led electrification of everything . It's not that cheap , nor readily network scalable weatherwise, nor making us into an economic superpower . Scarcely for "saving the environment", net-zero's mostly another market-proxy for business-as-usual growth. Notably, for Chinese expansionism, as abetted by "greens" in mighty California itself .

Australia needs gas for decades at least, for peaking power . As if for net-zero-deity, we flog off our coal/gas bonanzas to enrich Asian powers ahead of citizens.

Check our Treasury and national rugby-squad of climate-energy acronyms – AEC, AEIC, AEMC, AEMO, AER, ARENA, CCA, CEF, CEFC, CER, CSIRO, DCCEEW, ICEDS, ISP, NZEA, etc. Pushing UN-OECD-EU-IMF seductions – massive immigration's fine, renewable energy could still be the driest continent's "least cost" solution for "net zero" world.

Starting from his gravity-defying "productivity" model then working backwards, Albanese's a provincial cousin for the ideological overreach (and subsequent rethink) of Germany's Energiewende (energy turnaround).

Australian politicians love this net-zero distraction

Inveigling voters, Trudeau (Carney) Liberal and Albanese Labor climate-buddies implied manageable migration, housing fairness. Each pushed population-growth to 2.5-3%. On anti-Trump sentiment, each won 2025 re-election.

Ironically, despite the fallout for Biden-Harris, America's "highest in decades" 2023-34 population growth didn't even breach 1%. Anything nearly that "low" would be kryptonite for Australian Treasury. Even 1% is way high - that's approximately what Earth is doing - 80 million a year on 8 billion.

Still, Garnaut promotes Australia, as carbon-sink El Dorado in zero-carbon world. We'll ace net-zero for our "expanding" population, mopping a hefty 7% of global emissions as an encore.