G’Day, Greenies: I Frolic In Your Salty Tears

I promised I would write a post on the Australian power market when a suitable article came along, and that time has come.

Check out the logic. Australia closes its coal plants (highly efficient, reliable, and with a cheap source of fuel given Australia is a dominant coal producer), and replaces them with wind. Wind, being highly erratic, requires (given the closure of the coal plants) gas-fueled plants to offset the variability of wind output, and as a result gas is on the margin most hours in Australia. And Australian power prices are sky-high because . . . LNG exports reduce gas supplies in Australia, keeping the price of gas high.

Riiiggghhhttt.

You cannot make up this stuff.

No. It’s not the first two links in the process that are blamed–the ones that those who are whinging deliberately chose. Instead, it’s the last link, which was an inevitable result of the first two choices.

This is blame shifting on crack.

I should also note that those gas resources that supply exports would not have been developed absent the export market. They would not have been developed to supply the domestic market alone. So LNG exports are a scapegoat for a problem created by conscious decisions by the green left (i.e., the watermelons) to jam renewables down people’s throats.

It is particularly ironic that this article came out shortly before the Australian election, the results of which have caused a complete mental breakdown on the left. The Liberal Party (which is to the right, relatively speaking, Down Under) staged a surprising upset of the Labour Party, resulting in an unhinging comparable to that in the UK after Brexit or the US after Trump. I can’t tell you the number of tweets I read where people–adults, allegedly–confessed to crying uncontrollably.

I frolic in their salty tears.

The irony comes from the fact that the Labour Party is hard core in its support for yet more attempts to decarbonize Australia’s economy. Perhaps they should consider the possibility that a major reason for their rejection at the polls is the anger of many Australians at the consequences of previous climate-driven policies (including sky high electricity prices), and their wanting no more of such nonsense.

The shock on the left at the outcome shows that three years after Brexit and two-and-a-half years after Trump the leftist elites have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing. It is no doubt another example of their perpetual bullshit loop in action. Leftist-friendly views dominate the media. Anyone expressing contrary views is attacked, which leads to self-censorship and preference falsification. So leftist opinions and sentiment dominate public discourse, convincing leftists that everybody agrees with them, except for a lunatic fringe. But in the privacy of the polling booth, people can express their true views, and perhaps do so with a relish, as this is an opportunity to stick it to those who shout them down. The result is shock and dismay on the left.

But they are as ever incapable of learning, instead just writing off their conquerors as cranks and extremists. As annoying as they are, I hope they don’t change. Because as long as they don’t change, they will continue to lose.

Ironically, the left’s climate change obsession is one of the things that doomed them:

Australian conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s surprise come-from-behind win in national elections was fueled by a campaign that focused on fears that economic and climate policies pledged by center-left opponents would end the world’s longest growth streak.

. . . .

Climate change re-emerged as an election issue following a summer of wildfires, drought, floods and extreme temperatures. Voter support for policies aimed at addressing climate change was at the highest level since 2007. But, as in the U.S., divisions grew more stark as the issue gathered steam.
Labor pledged to reduce emissions by 45% from 2005 levels by 2030, after Australia under the conservatives became the first developed nation to abolish a price on carbon in 2014. The party also promised a push on renewable energy and electric vehicles, offering detailed and transparent policies that opened its agenda to months of concerted attack from Mr. Morrison.

Given the track record (e.g., the high electricity prices that motivated this post), this was a target rich environment for Mr. Morrison and the Liberals. And it is evident that they put much steel on the target.

Also ironic is that the Labour Party was defeated in part by the impact of its climate policies on what was once upon a time the bedrock of labor movements and parties around the world: coal miners, and those dependent on coal production. This demonstrates yet again that left parties have basically abandoned their historical constituencies, and are now dominated by effete metropolitans who are not only completely unfamiliar with muscular labor, but actually despise the muscular laborer.

Excuse me while I engage in a little long distance schadenfreude, and scroll through Twitter to witness yet another meltdown by the Bourbon left.