We can’t hit zero without nuclear
The Glasgow Climate Conference, COP26, is set to be the Free Tibet and Kony2012 of the 2020s – here we go on another quest to save the world. Adhd-suffering social justice warriors forget each fad almost as quickly as they hit the retweet button.
Remember Free Tibet? Tibet’s not free, but where are the flags, bumper stickers and movies as superstar Hollywood activists found shiny new issues to hashtag?
What about Kony2012? Joseph Kony, the Ugandan war lord, who believes he is a spokesman of God, indicted to the Hague for crimes against humanity, is still at large with his army of kids. But where did the millions of retweets and hashtags go?
While Cop26 proudly tweets 100 leaders will set on Glasgow for the talk-fest, China and India, who together make up a third of the global population, won’t be there. Nor will Russia who make up 4.76 per cent of global emissions.
Without them, Cop26 will come up with a slogan just as meaningful as Free Tibet or Kony2012.
The irony is China is the biggest beneficiary of Cop26 because by not attending, they position as forerunners of the new global world order, they are buying our critical infrastructure and soon they will be the major supplier of our supposedly green energy in the manufacture of solar panels which are going to our landfill as households promised 15-year roof systems find they only work for seven.
At least China showed up to Cop15 when PM Kevin Rudd sent a bigger delegation from Australia than any other western country, where the brilliant assistance to our bilateral relations was our PM calling the Chinese “ratf--kers” – a slogan he did not need 95 advisers to come up with. Poor countries are going to Glasgow, not to be pressured into energy poverty by climate activists in rich countries, who get hot water when they turn on the tap – a luxury millions do not have, but to collect on previous promises of wealthy countries funding $US100 billion for climate mitigation.
Nigeria, whose national electricity grid collapsed 132 times between 2013 and 2020, where blackouts are a daily occurrence, where one in three live in energy poverty, who have the largest gas reserves in the world, and a soaring population, are being told to leave their gas in the ground and buy Chinese solar panels.
Who is COP26 to tell developing nations they cannot use the same natural resources the same way they did to build their roads, schools, hospitals and stability? The Nigerians are going to Europe in the grip of an energy crisis caused by the lack of baseload power, a wind drought, and early winter with not as much sun, all relying on French nuclear to keep the lights on, just as a damning UK Treasury report released this week said lower-income households will suffer, while the impact of the transition to net-zero is “highly uncertain” and will depend on “technological progress that has not yet occurred”.
The only way we can sign up to Netzero, without economy-crippling blackouts that will force First World Australia onto back-up diesel generators, is small modular nuclear reactors. NSW Nationals will revisit nuclear post-election after One Nation’s Mark Latham’s bill in the Upper House this week to lift a 35-year-old law to ban uranium mining and nuclear drew support from everyone but the Greens and Green-infused Labor members. They helpfully cited economists are not backing uranium mining. Yes, because it is banned. It is a unicorn of an investor who will funnel coin into illegal activities. Even Labor staffers told ICAC it was “unusual” that an Aldi shopping bag full of cash was allegedly delivered to party headquarters by a Chinese billionaire, but perhaps some members need a refresher of how legal investment looks.
Among Labor’s points in the Upper House debate, which mirrored eerily similar monologues in the House of Representatives this week, were claims “renewable energy is now cheaper and more efficient than nuclear power”.
Please, show us a solar panel that works in the dark. It is easy to see what the next scare campaign will be. Soviet 1960s technology melting down, when the reality is we use nuclear to manufacture medicine in Australia already, and it is an ideological leap, not a technological one to land it. The fear of nuclear is like the fear of chemtrails from jet planes. We are the third-largest uranium exporter in the world. We dig it up in South Australia, semiprocess it, drive it on a truck through town, put it on a ship, but we cannot use it here. It’s like saying we can grow cattle but not eat steak.
Chernobyl was used for power and plutonium for making atom bombs. It was not a small modular reactor,
4.5m wide and 7m high, transported on a truck. We know nuclear works 24/7, and the only reason we don’t have it was our collective legislative panic post-1986 when we fell for the last anti-nuclear fad. For the federal Nationals, who won marginal Queensland coal seats on Senator Matt Canavan’s anti-bob Brown campaign, signing Netzero without nuclear could be a suicide note of the conviction politician.
The Nats, still trying to mollify Kyoto, where the government flogged farmers’ trees and broke out the champers, cannot have a sequel at Glasgow. This week, the federal Nationals party room spent hours deliberating a Netzero deal that should have been simple: Not without nuclear.