Progress is more than virtue signalling

CLIMATE Change Minister Chris Bowen has committed Australia to paying an unspecified amount into the $US2 trillion climate fund to help unspecified developing countries combat climate change.

This represents all of the reasons why the Liberal Party needs to reclaim the climate change agenda.

My attendance at the International Climate Change Conference in Egypt (COP27) clarified for me that the Liberal Party must return the climate change and the environment conversation into the main issues and values to which most Australians subscribe.

Those being energy security, economic growth and climate mitigation. The hijacking of the climate change movement by the left has meant that the conversation has evolved from an environmental movement into virtue signalling about social and political issues.

The Albanese government has just demonstrated this.

If we return to approaching the climate change agenda under the prism of conservative values, we would focus back on Australia’s environment – preserving natural resources, cleaning up waterways, reversing deforestation, developing more sustainable agricultural practices and using science to predict bushfires and floods. These are core values of right-of-centre politics.

Conserving the best parts of our institutions and our world while facilitating environments to encourage personal enterprise to change those that can be improved.

Australia’s energy crisis is obvious. The decarbonisation challenge for Australia is in our energy supply.

As the “lucky country”, we have used our vast natural resources, particularly coal and gas, to modernise our economy and our society. This has ensured Australian families and businesses have enjoyed affordable and reliable energy for more than a century.

The challenge for us now is to move from fossil fuels to other energy sources in a measured way, ensuring our economic growth and standard of living. This means working with renewable energy technology while considering all avenues available.

We need to investigate whether there is a potential role for nuclear technology to assist us to achieve netzero emissions by 2050. At COP27, several panels were dedicated to demonstrating how small modular reactors are being rolled out in the United States and Europe to address their energy supply issues.

It is not clear whether nuclear energy could be effective in Australia in a similar manner. However, the current leftist approach by the Labor Party and the Greens – “just say no” – is not assisting us to potentially solve our energy crisis. Similarly, to simply throw unspecified amounts of money into an unspecified global fund for “loss and damage” is not showing international leadership.

Facilitating an environment to empower personal endeavour, market forces, businesses and industry to reach solutions and be rewarded is an integral value of liberalism and conservatism.