The Net Zero cult is running into reality as more countries, this time Australia turn their back on it
The Liberal Party has officially dumped its commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050 and opened the door to nuclear energy, building new coal power stations and extending the life of existing ones. After weeks of internal turmoil and a tense five-hour meeting between all 51 Liberal MPs and senators on Wednesday, leader Sussan Ley announced the party will abandon its policy commitment to achieve net zero emissions by mid-century. 'If elected, we will remove the 43 per cent 2030 target and its net zero by 2050 target from the Climate Change Act,' she said. 'Australians deserve affordable energy and responsible emissions reduction. And the Liberal Party believes we can do both - but affordable energy must come first,' Ley said. 'Under Labor, there has been this trifecta of failures: prices up, reliability down, and emissions flatlining. 'Labor's net zero policies of mandates and taxes are hurting businesses, and they're pushing up prices. 'Despite promises of cheaper energy, prices have increased substantially under Labor.'Energy spokesman Dan Tehan said the party was not opposed to opening new coal power plants. 'We will take a technology agnostic approach. So we will let the market determine how we go about that approach.
Daily Mail
Hopefully there enough sane people in Australia who will vote for this.
"After weeks of internal turmoil and a tense five-hour meeting between all 51 Liberal MPs and senators on Wednesday, leader Sussan Ley announced the party will abandon its policy commitment to achieve net zero emissions by mid-century".
Well, that's 51 out of 226 total MPs and Senators, so it's not really "Australia", so much as 22.5% of Australia's government; And clearly not all of them are in wholehearted agreement, or there would have been no turmoil, no tension, and a five
minute meeting.
The Liberal Party are one part of the then right-wing coalition that was recently soundly thrashed in the May 3 election, causing the coalition to break up, and which was won in a landslide by Labor; Labor holds 94 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives (the highest number of seats ever won by a single political party in an Australian election), and 28 of the 76 Senate seats, making Labor the largest Senate bloc (for the first time since 1984). The Liberal Party has 28 MPs, and 20 Senators, (and the three others who make up their 51 are Queenland LNP members who choose to side with the Liberals rather than the Nationals).
The meeting being reported here is not representative of some fundamental shift in Australian politics
away from Net Zero; It is rather the desparate effort of a losing political party to find a way out of its current shambles.
The coalition was hamstrung in large part by the so-called "Teal independents", basically these are the portion of the Liberal Party who rebeled against the coalition's opposition to Net Zero, which they saw, in part, as being driven by the National Party (the other party in the coalition).
So we have three major blocs in play here: Labor, who support Net Zero and won in a landslide;
Teal, who support Net Zero, broke away from the Liberals over that issue, and caused large numbers of Liberal MPs to lose formerly "safe" seats; and
Liberal, who have finally decided, after a massive electoral drubbing, and a lot of heated argument, that the solution to their woes is to double down on opposition to Net Zero, in the hope of rebuilding the shattered coalition with the National Party.
As usual, reading the Daily Fail has given you an impression of what is happening that is so simplistic as to be completely wrong. What you are seeing is not "Australia opposes Net Zero"; It is "Australia is so keen on Net Zero that the coalition opposing it fell to bits, and one small fraction of that former coalition is now trying to patch things up by getting off the fence and sucking up to the fraction who always opposed Net Zero".
