PLEA Network

12 September 2017, Renew Economy, Turnbull’s energy obstructionism is Abbott’s climate denial revisited. There is a grim precedent for the Australian Coalition government’s decision to push for coal and ignore the majority of expert: the same government’s rejection of climate science. Like his predecessor, Tony Abbott, prime minister Malcolm Turnbull is simply refusing to listen. Abbott said that climate science was “crap”, and Turnbull is saying the same thing in response to what he is being told by energy experts. To insist that extending the life of the Liddell coal-fired generator in the NSW Hunter valley is the only option available to keep the lights on is to simply ignore the advice of the Australian Energy Market Operator, as well as by the chief scientist Alan Finkel, the CSIRO, the owners of networks, the big gentailers and any number of individual experts and academics. AGL could not have made it any clearer, after the meeting with the PM on Monday, if it hadn’t already done so, about the state of the Liddell plant. For a government married to the concept of “baseload” power, it is an extraordinary decision to put its hopes on this piece of aged machinery. It makes no economic sense, no environmental sense, and is a potential engineering catastrophe. Turnbull and energy minister Josh Frydenberg have even picked up the Abbott-era sloganeering and name-calling: Blackout Bill, Brownout Butler and No-coal Joel (Fitzgibbon). You don’t need facts to play a game like this, in fact you are better off without them. Just ask Peta Credlin about the “carbon tax”. Indeed, it is no coincidence that the politicians wagging the tail of the dog on this issue are the very same who fought the science of climate change: Abbott, deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, ex resources minister Matt Canavan, environment committee head Craig Kelly, and around half of the back-bench. Read More here