Excellent work by George Christensen detailing the extent of devastation to Australian industry and material way of life due to the insane, Great Reset climate change laws. These laws would do little even if there was a climate threat, which here is not, as we have detailed with blog pieces from last week, with thousands of scientists putting their signature to a document asserting that there is no climate crisis. Yet the mantra of a climate crisis is exactly the same fear campaign used to get the majority of people taking the quax/vax, with about the same illogic. Mr Christensen does not hold back on the full implications of this, which makes for insightful, but chilling reading. Our elites really do want to caVe in Western civilisation, and we must stop them.
https://nationfirst.substack.com/p/climate-laws-put-australia-on-road
“The job-destroying Climate Change Bill, introduced by Australia’s fledgling Labor government, is currently being scrutinised as part of a Senate inquiry.
And while that inquiry has revealed some interesting information, don’t expect it to stop the bill from getting legs.
With the support of the Greens, the proposed climate laws will likely be passed by the Senate within weeks, after the draft law was approved in the House of Representatives earlier this month.
The bill calls for more extreme measures to be taken to curb carbon dioxide emissions and would effectively block all future coal and gas projects.
This includes new mining operations as well as the construction of new baseload fossil fuel power plants.
This will be disastrous for Australia. Why?
Well, Nation First has previously covered how eastern Australia is set to suffer a major power crisis in the next few years unless the emerging energy deficit can be overcome.
This bill effectively eliminates any hopes of the nation resolving the emerging crisis by preventing the opening of any new baseload power plants.
Without significant investment in battery storage, the reality is renewables aren’t likely to overcome this deficit.
With a global recession in the offing it is also likely that there simply won’t be enough investment pouring into the sector to make it worthwhile.
BlackRock grifts off of the bill
But the globalist ‘elite’ grifters are making sure they put just enough investment in to look good but, more so, to milk Australians for all they are worth.
BlackRock — one of a handful of multinational investment oligarchies — has just taken over an Australian energy company and announced it will invest US$690 million in new battery storage in the country.
That investment will only cover about 4GW of renewables, not even supplanting the loss from the system of the pending closure of the Lidell and Eraring coal fired power plants.
With the supply of battery storage set to be limited well below demand, BlackRock will pretty much be able to charge whatever they damn well like and, if Australians want the lights to stay on, they will have to pay it.
The prospect of power prices significantly rising in Australia once again will have a direct impact on inflation which is already out of control.
One of the items to be hit hard will be domestically-produced food.
Energy costs are already excessively high for many farmers that require irrigation and are also high for many food production facilities.
In addition, the production of artificial fertiliser — so essential to modern agriculture of scale — requires cheap energy to be economical.
A knock to Australia’s agriculture sector will make the nation more dependent on food imports and this, in turn, will impact the balance of trade, national debt, food security and our national sovereignty.
Selling out to the globalists
One of the submissions to the Senate inquiry into the climate bill notes the risk that the bill poses to Australia’s national sovereignty.
The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) points out that the climate bill contains a ‘rachet clause’ which “risks ceding parliamentary authority to international organisations through further embedding the Paris Climate Agreement”.
This ‘ratchet clause’ found in Section 10 (4), (5) and (6) of the bill allows the government to prepare and communicate “a new national determined contribution in accordance with Article 4 of the Paris [Climate] Agreement” which would seek to reduce emissions further.
The IPA points out that the explanatory memorandum to the bill “outlines that the purpose of the rachet clause is to ‘mirror the Paris Agreement principle against ‘backsliding – that is, the weakening rather than strengthening of ambition over time’.”
Thus further emissions targets could be imposed upon the Australian populace without requiring the consent of parliament, or — as the IPA says:
“… without debate, without a vote, and even without parliament sitting.
The consequence is to risk giving preference to the values and policy preferences of unelected internationalist bureaucrats over that of the Australian community.”
Job losses to hit regions hard
The climate bill will also a negative impact on the Australian job market.
Not only will prospective new jobs go up in smoke as planned energy projects fail to get approval but existing jobs will take a hit as well.
Facing rising energy costs and an additional ‘carbon’ tax burden, many energy-intensive industries will be forced to downsize operations, laying off many of their workers.
Some may even pack up and relocate overseas where energy prices are cheaper as are labour costs.
The IPA identified that, as a minimum, the bill would require all coal, gas, and oil projects in the construction pipeline to be cancelled.
The resultant impact would be a $274 billion cost to the Australian economy in forgone economic output, or 13.5% of Australia’s annual Gross Domestic Product.
What this means is that more than 478,000 new jobs will be cancelled, many in regional areas such North Queensland, South-West Queensland and the Hunter Valley.
North Queensland will forgo $66.58 billion in economic output along with 125,000 new jobs, South-West Queensland $33.65 billion in economic output and over 60,000 jobs and the Hunter Valley $11.5 billion in economic output and almost 22,000 jobs.
The term ghost town comes to mind for these regions.
A Senator throws down the gauntlet
Recognising the economic hardship the bill will cause to his nation, one Senator has thrown down the gauntlet to his colleagues, reminding them that they “have a shared solemn duty to behave with integrity” which “embraces our duty to ensure legislation and policies are solidly based on accurate and objective data so that the consequences on our constituents and nation are safe, affordable and fair.”
Senator Malcolm Roberts has written to all Senators with several key documents — including an analysis of Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation claims about climate change — which “reveal that the effect on climate of Australia’s human production of carbon dioxide has never been specified or quantified.”
Roberts has had to remind his colleagues that “sound policy and honest legislation should be based on quantified and measurable evidence so that we can assess its cost-benefit and then measure implementation to track whether the legislation is effective and achieves the desired outcomes.”
He has said:
The lack of vigorously tested evidence has allowed governments to create policy that is permanently damaging our once cheap and reliable electricity system.
Our manufacturing industries are disappearing overseas, families are struggling to pay their exorbitant power bills, farmers are under needless economic threat and our once reliable electricity system is on its knees, due to government regulations forcing intermittent and unstable wind and solar into the electricity grid.
Even our children are not safe from this alarmism, with eco-anxiety finding its way into the innocent world of our children.
Nor is the environment safe, due to the lack of recycling of many solar, wind and battery components with relatively short working lives, and due to other inherently damaging aspects of solar and wind.
Truer words have probably not reached the desks of many Senators in a long time.
The upshot
Ordinary Australian citizens, already suffering from current soaring prices and rising economic uncertainty, can expect their living standards to be further compromised if and when the Climate Change Bill is passed by the Parliament.
Jobs will be lost.
Electricity prices will rise.
And national sovereignty will be sacrificed on the altar of the Paris Agreement.
All of this is thanks to the Labor government’s green ideological agenda, and its need to kowtow to the globalists who push that same agenda… even if it comes at a cost to the wellbeing of the very people that voted it into power.
As a former Australian Member of Parliament who served for over a decade, I know it is important that proposed laws be based on common sense, and that lawmakers properly weigh the pros and cons of laws, because they do impact the lives of real people.
Instead, what we have with the Climate Change Bill is an illogical push of an ideological narrative that will cost the country greatly.”