There’s an old saying “A week is a long time in politics”. Since I began the previous post, Paved with Good Intentions , two days ago, much has changed. I have noted the outrage of some of this blog’s followers and, last night on the Bolt Report, I witnessed a video of the President of Sri Lanka announcing the economic measures which have since turned his country into a basket case.
Perhaps we should expect similar levels of self-flagellation here in Australia.
With Albanese at the wheel, Australia may soon face similar issues to Sri Lanka despite our plentiful resources. Our Prime Minister shows similar levels of Climate Change piety: “My government has changed Australia’s position on climate change from day one. The science told us that if we continued to not take action globally on climate change, then these events, extreme weather events, would be more often and more intense. And what we’re seeing, unfortunately, is that play out.” (Comment on the Sydney floods, Sydney Morning Herald 6/7/22). Instead we are seeing fashionably Green, climate change catastrophism play out, thanks to the Australian Energy Market Operator’s new sycophant, Energy Minister, Chris Bowen. We can expect sky-rocketing power prices and more blackouts in the near future in SE Australia.
Except perhaps for Tasmania where a cheap, convenient, emission-free, hydro-electric installed capacity of 2600 MW has been accumulating for more than a century. (Waddamana came on line in 1916.) Over the years this has attracted electrically intensive industries to the state such as zinc and aluminium refining. The latest is a proposal by E-fuels group HIF Global, which is backed by Porsche, to build a $1 billion production plant for synthetic green fuels on the North-West Coast. Tasmania won out over North Queensland and Victoria.
I don’t know to what extent HIF Global’s decision was influenced by access to Tasmania’s excellent hydro-electric power system but it may well be that its advantages are illusory.
Tasmania is locked in to the Australian Energy Market Operator and price and reliability of its supply are therefore determined by Mainland conditions. Tasmania could well be dragged down to the level of the other states unless something is done about this.
We’ve been having it too easy for too long, the Anglosphere. The Bad that complements, goes along with the Good of our exceptional luck in getting rid of the competition . . .
To “Rule the [world’s] Waves” . . .
What makes me worried, pessimistic, is the Economic irrationality we’ve been in for so long, going from Bad to Worse,
culminating now with our trashing nuclear and coal . . .
How this contrasts with the extreme Economic RATIONALITY of how it started with the Atlantic Triangle’s fuelling Britain’s Industrial Revolution.
Added to by the similarly extreme Economic RATIONALITY of Britain’s trade with China, forcing them to exchange tea and porcelain for Opium, and then getting the Americans to pay a big tax for tea bought so cheaply from China,
and so on.