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Ken Fabian's avatar

If fossil fuel exports do decline because of concerns about climate and growth of renewable energy... at least the fossil fuel export industries (and their unions) won't find any cause to blame the ALP?

Have to say Albanese's government is dismayingly disappointing, especially knowing that the ALP and LNP stand together in their deep commitment to doing the least possible - effectively nullifying the power of any minority government with a Greens and Teals cross bench.

Deeply dismaying that climate destabilisation is not and has never been treated as a serious threat to Australia's prosperity and security and public safety and no Australian government has ever acted on the expert advice like it is actually true, like they had any duty of care... duty to Australia's future, above, beyond and aside from what media deflected and moderated public opinion can demand of them - because they don't want to. Rather, our government(s) act as if their primary duty of care is to protecting the long term prospects of the fossil fuel mining sector and it's profitability. Saving fossil fuels from global warming, yay.

Right now the fastest growing source of domestic emissions, enough to blow past the current "target", is that expanding of fossil fuel production for export. In order to sustain the illusion that Australia's emissions are going down whilst they are going up... we get dodgy carbon offsets and CCS. These are greenlighted in a fashion more akin to gaslighting than to greening.

Carbon offsets - this is claiming the recovery of vegetation back closer to prior levels as emissions reduction. They aren't. Not even claimed as land use emissions reductions but falsely and knowingly claimed as equivalent to fossil fuel emissions reduction - a travesty on the same low level as those holding the highest Offices of trust and responsibility handing the climate issue to public opinion, notably without fact checking - "you think it is true, you fix it".

Un-tried, un-proven sea bed CCS? Yay, that will fix it - in a similar sense to race-fixing maybe.

For all that there is so much to be positive about - the means to have energy abundance with low emissions, renewable energy mostly, some of the best of it developed by Australians - the absolute, unwavering ALP support for fossil fuel mining, even absent the LNP's open hostility to RE, undercuts any optimism. "Fixing" the Greens matters more to Albanese's government than fixing emissions.

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Mark Phillips's avatar

The issue that is usually not addressed is the value of carbon exports towards Australia’s GDP. Until Australia is able to find a substitute for our overseas earnings from carbon this is not going to happen no matter which of the duopoly controls federal parliament.

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