Craig Kelly runs bullshit Australian Climate and Energy policy

Liberal MP Craig Kelly is Chair of the Government's backbench Committee on Environment and Energy.  Who in the government commissioned this committee?  Why does it seem to be running the government? Energy and environment are key government policy areas. A bunch of retrograde backbenchers should be having rather limited influence. Craig Kelly is particularly keen on climate change denial. It ought to be called the bullshit bench.

The committee will provide feedback on legislation and policies relating to the environment and energy, including to the minister, Josh Frydenberg

Kelly served on the committee during the last parliament and previously invited climate sceptics to “balance” a presentation given by top climate scientists.

Guardian - Climate sceptic MP appointed chair of environment and energy committee

Craig gave a sales spiel of whinges against renewable energy on RN Breakfast ABC radio, with his trademark consistency of bullshit.  Craig does not like renewable energy, and says Australia should not be buying all these ship loads of ever more cheaper and effective solar panels from China. Instead Australia should be spending money just for research and development. Perhaps Craig is trying to imply that renewable energy is not yet good enough. Craig fails to say exactly what features of renewable energy still need to be researched to meet his high standards.

We have to give attention to Mr Kelly's idiotic pronouncements, as the power of Liberal backbench climate-change denying votes appears to be ruling the executive of the Australian government, and its climate and energy policy. The ABC radio programmers seem to think the same, as they seem to be required to give false media balance and air time to total bullshit.

The energy marketplace, where we spend our energy dollars, obviously has a different opinion. For such a "Liberal" party, that in the past has trundled out its economic and free-market management ability, they surely are totally missing out on the ecological and energy market trends.     Or maybe they are too frightened to talk about it.

Long term decline and collapse

There are long term declines in rates of economic growth everywhere, due to non-renewable resource depletion. We are in a general state of global carrying capacity overshoot, evidenced by declining renewable resource base, for critical agriculture and sustainable fishing and forestry, and rates of global warming, and several other natural systems indicators. Simple predictions state that general collapse will occur soon.  Australia's energy profligate lifestyles will come to an end.

Energy returns for energy invested in fossil fuels have be declining for decades.  Every year, a sneaking larger proportion of total fossil fuel energy gets used up just to extract and supply enough energy to the rest of the economy. This has an effect on cost structures of all industries, particularly mining, which also suffers from non-renewable resource depletion. Absolute depletion is happening faster, as we also need to extract faster just to maintain our net energy supply.

The energy returns on investments in clean energy now compare favourably to fossil fuel energy, despite those well identified issues of large energy capture area, intermittent nature,  and inadequate energy storage density. This is present and future reality.

Renewable energy or nothing

As far as climate change is concerned, the boast to global economy from renewable energy may even be considered a handicap, as it adds energy support to the economies of developed nations, helps prevent economic collapse, and allows industrial economies to further eke out declining fossil fuel extraction and burning, for economically critical areas such as transport.  Renewable energy is only good if total greenhouse gas emissions can be brought down to near zero, within 1-2 decades.  If it post-pones the collapse of global fossil fuel industries, then a partial transition to renewable energy may be globally harmful.

As for the electricity grid, reaching only 40% of renewable energy capacity in twenty years time will be a failure.  Only climate change denial can consider this a success. As there is already worrying talk about the need for "negative emissions" technology, anything other than a zero - carbon economy in 20 years time will result in global ecological failure, with more nasty consequences for more peoples. No further research is required to understand this is a brutal reality of our situation.


What is the difference between a steaming pile of bullshit and a pile of coal? No difference at all, if it is the Australia government



author:
Michael Rynn
description:
Liberal climate change-denial backbenchers run Australian government climate and energy policy.
keywords:
Climate change denial, Australian government bullshit policy
og:title:
Craig Kelly runs bullshit Australian Climate and Energy policy