Over 50 predictions of "PROVEN DOOM"

Thursday, 6 December 2018

David Attenborough: 'The sky is falling'

David Attenborough has been widely lauded in headlines worldwide for his dramatic claim that is"civilisation" is to be saved then "we" have just thirty years in which to "take action" -- that action being in the main, as per his speech, government action to ban private actions. “The world’s people have spoken," claimed Attenborough. "Time is running out. They want you, the decision-makers, to act now." A strange claim indeed to make in a week in which many of France's people set fire to Paris to protest the decision-makers' new French carbon tax.

Stranger still to hear the great man sound so shrill. In the words of Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore,

It's a real shame, but Sir David has allowed himself to be used as a prophet of doom. Who knows what caused his mind to be sucked into this deviance from his once celebratory view of living creation? The demonisation of CO2 is an evil act against the most important food for life.

Even if the doom-mongers were correct about the science, of course, that would say nothing at all about the action to be taken. Bjorn Lomborg for example warns that "strong global climate action would cause far more hunger and food insecurity than climate change itself.” And civilisation itself demands in any case that we take the doom-mongering cautiously.

Before any implication for action can be present, additional information is required.
    One essential piece of information is the comparative valuation attached to retaining industrial civilisation versus avoiding global warming. If one values the benefits provided by industrial civilisation above the avoidance of the losses alleged to result from global warming, it follows that nothing should be done to stop global warming that destroys or undermines industrial civilisation. That is, it follows that global warming should simply be accepted as a byproduct of economic progress and that life should go on as normal in the face of it.
    Modern, industrial civilisation and its further development are values that we dare not sacrifice if we value our material well-being, our health, and our very lives. It is what has enabled billions more people to survive and to live longer and better. Here in the United States it has enabled the average person to live at a level far surpassing that of kings and emperors of a few generations ago.
    The foundation of this civilisation has been, and for the foreseeable future will continue to be, the use of fossil fuels.

Nevertheless, there is a reason most people sleep far more easily than they should given all the doom-mongering going around -- and there is a very good reason for that: which is the many, many years of  fatuous, fat-headed environmental predictions made by a litany of worry-worts and misanthropic headline-hunting doomsayers.

Predictions like these:

• Britain's industrial growth will come to a halt because its coal reserves are running out “… it is useless to think of substituting any other kind of fuel for coal... some day our coal seams [may] be found emptied to the bottom, and swept clean like a coal-cellar. Our fires and furnaces ... suddenly extinguished, and cold and darkness ... left to reign over a depopulated country."
  --Economist William Stanley Jevons, writing in 1865
• Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions....By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.
  --Peter Gunter, a professor at North Texas State University. Spring 1970 issue of ‘The Living Wilderness.’
• Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….” 
  --‘Life’ Magazine, January 1970
• Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.--George Wald, Harvard Biologist, Earth Day, 1970
• It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.
  --Denis Hayes, chief organiser for Earth Day, 1970
• …some scientists estimate that the world's known supplies of oil, tin, copper, and aluminium will be used up within your lifetime.
  --1990s school textbook The United States and Its People, quoted by Ronald Bailey in testimony to US House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, Feb 4, 2004

[So many more further predictions of doom, from very important prophets of knowledge, :-) made in the past 50 years.

Are they seeking control and power over people?
Social legislation can NOT repeal physical Laws.
 So socialism is the governmental embodiment of the common good.

Students will do anything to stop Carbon Missions?

Yeah right.

Found and think great for a laugh

I recently was so moved by the student Climate Change protests across the country I decided to send all the students an email .

Attention, students. Because so many of you missed Friday’s classes, what with your little climate party and all, today I’m assigning extra work.
Let’s begin with mathematics. 558,400,000 is a really big number. Can anyone here tell me what it might represent? No?
Well, that’s the amount in tonnes of carbon dioxide that Australia emitted last year.
I’ll just pause here for a minute until Samantha stops crying. By the way, Samantha, your sign at the climate rally needed a possessive apostrophe and “planet” was spelled incorrectly, so I’m putting you back in remedial English again.

Where were we? Oh, yes. 558,400,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Let’s see how we can reduce that number. Ban coal mining? That’ll knock off a big chunk.
Ban petrol-powered vehicles? Good call. That’s another slab of emissions gone.
Does the class believe we should ban all mining? You do. Interesting. For your homework tonight, I want you all to design batteries that contain no nickel or cadmium.
Good luck getting to school in electric cars without those.
And there’ll be no more steel wind turbines once the iron ore mines are closed. It’s just the price we’ll have to pay, I suppose.
Even with all those bans, however, Australia will still be churning out carbon dioxide by the magical solar-powered truckload. Cuts need to go much further.

More people means more human activity which means more carbon dioxide, so let’s permanently ban immigration. Is the class agreed?
Hmmm. You’re not quite so enthusiastic about that one. Come on, students. Sacrifices must be made.
Speaking of which, how many of you have grandparents? Not any more you don’t.
And Samantha is crying again. Can someone please take her to the school safe space and let her “process some emotions”, or whatever the hell it is you kids do in there? Thank you.
Sing along with Kim Carnes: “All the world knows of her charms/She’s got/Stop Adani arms”

Who agrees we need to simplify our lives in order to reduce emissions? Returning to earlier times, when emissions were much lower, might help save our earth.
So goodbye to air travel, the internet and your cell phones. People got by without them in the past and they’ll survive without them in our sustainable future.

Still, those emissions will be way too high. Just for fun, let’s ban Australia and see what happens.
All factories, houses, streets, farms – gone. All people gone. Every atom of human presence on this land mass, completely erased.
At that point we’ll have finally cut our emissions to nothing. We’ve subtracted an annual 558,400,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Congratulations, children. By eliminating Australia, you’ve just reduced the world’s yearly generation of carbon dioxide from 37,100,000,000 tonnes to just … 36,541,600,000 tonnes.
Still, every tiny reduction helps, right? Maybe not. Let’s have a quick geography lesson. Tyler, please point out China on this map. No; that’s Luxembourg. China is a bit bigger. Try over here. There you go.

Here’s the thing about China. How long will it take for China to produce the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide that we’ve slashed by vanishing Australia? One year? Two years? Five years?
Not quite. Start the carbon dioxide clock on China right now, and that one enormous nation will have matched our annual output by April 5. China adds a whole Australia to the global emissions total every twenty days.
For that matter, China will have added another 1,190,953 tonnes by the end of this one-hour class.
Even a tiny increase in China’s output puts Australia in the shade. Various experts last year estimated that China was on course for a five per cent carbon dioxide boost.
This would mean an extra 521,637,550 tonnes – or basically what Australia generates. Our total is the same as China’s gentle upswing.

So maybe your protest was in the wrong country. Here’s another assignment: write letters to the Chinese government demanding it stops dragging people out of poverty.
Make sure you include your full name and address, because the Chinese government is kind of big on keeping records. Send a photograph of yourself standing in front of your parents’ house.
You might repeat this process in India. In fact, rather than going to Europe for your next big family holiday, prevail upon your parents to visit India instead. The tiny village of Salaidih would be the perfect place to tell slum-dwelling residents they shouldn’t have electricity.
They’ll probably thank you for it. Or they should, if they aren’t stupid climate deniers. Indian paupers must avoid making the same tragic affluence mistakes as us, so we must keep their carbon footprints as tiny as possible.
Can you imagine how terrible is would be for the earth if all of India’s one billion-plus population owned cars and air-conditioners? It really doesn’t bear thinking about.

One further assignment: tonight, locate a clean, green alternative source for $66 billion in exports. That’s how much was raised last year by the Australian coal industry.
Working it out won’t be too much of a challenge, I’m sure. After all, you know science and stuff. About half of your signs on Friday claimed you know more about all these things than does the Prime Minister.
Show him how advanced your brains are by devising a brand-new multi-billion export bonanza.
Hey, look who’s back! Feeling better, Samantha? That’s nice. Feelings are the most important thing of all

Greta Thunberg: Inconvenient Truth of Capitalism's Green Greed.

THE MANUFACTURING OF GRETA THUNBERG – FOR CONSENT: THE MOST INCONVENIENT TRUTH: “CAPITALISM IS IN DANGER OF FALLING APART” [ACT III]

Wrong Kind of Green Jan 28, 2019 The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg - for Consent: The Most Inconvenient Truth: "Capitalism is in Danger of Falling Apart"

January 28, 2019

http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/01/28/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-most-inconvenient-truth-capitalism-is-in-danger-of-falling-apart/

By Cory Morningstar

This is ACT III of the six-part series: The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent: The Political Economy of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

In ACT I of this new body of research I opened the dialogue with the observations of artist Hiroyuki Hamada:

“What’s infuriating about manipulations by Non Profit Industrial Complex is that they harvest good will of the people, especially young people. They target those who were not given skills and knowledge to truly think for themselves by institutions which are designed to serve the ruling class. Capitalism operates systematically and structurally like a cage to raise domesticated animals. Those organizations and their projects which operate under false slogans of humanity in order to prop up the hierarchy of money and violence are fast becoming some of the most crucial elements of the invisible cage of corporatism, colonialism and militarism.”

The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent has been written in six acts. [ACT I • ACT II • ACT III • ACT IV • ACT V • ACT VI] [Addenda: I]

In ACT I, I disclosed that Greta Thunberg, the current child prodigy and face of the youth movement to combat climate change, served as special youth advisor and trustee to the burgeoning mainstream tech start-up, “We Don’t Have Time”. I then explored the ambitions behind the tech company We Don’t Have Time.

In ACT II, I illustrated how today’s youth are the sacrificial lambs for the ruling elite. Also in this act I introduced the board members and advisors to “We Don’t Have Time.” I explored the leadership in the nascent We Don’t Have Time and the partnerships between the well established corporate environmental entities: Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project, 350.org, Avaaz, Global Utmaning (Global Challenge), the World Bank, and the World Economic Forum (WEF).

In ACT III, I deconstruct how Al Gore and the Planet’s most powerful capitalists are behind today’s manufactured youth movements and why. I explore the We Don’t Have Time/Thunberg connections to Our Revolution, the Sanders Institute, This Is Zero Hour, the Sunrise Movement and the Green New Deal. I also touch upon Thunberg’s famous family. In particular, Thunberg’s celebrity mother, Malena Ernman (WWF Environmental Hero of the Year 2017), and her August 2018 book launch. I then explore the generous media attention afforded to Thunberg in both May and April of 2018 by SvD, one of Sweden’s largest newspapers.

In ACT IV, I examine the current campaign, now unfolding, in “leading the public into emergency mode”. More importantly, I summarize who and what this mode is to serve.

In ACT V, I take a closer look at the Green New Deal. I explore Data for Progress and the targeting of female youth as a key “femographic”. I connect the primary architect and authors of the “Green New Deal” data to the World Resources Institute. From there, I walk you through the interlocking Business & Sustainable Development Commission and the New Climate Economy – a project of the World Resources Institute. I disclose the common thread between these groups and the assignment of money to nature, represented by the Natural Capital Coalition and the non-profit industrial complex as an entity. Finally, I reveal how this has culminated in the implementation of payments for ecosystem services (the financialization and privatization of nature, global in scale) which is “expected to be adopted during the fifteenth meeting in Beijing in 2020.”

In the final act, ACT VI [Crescendo], I wrap up the series by divulging that the very foundations which have financed the climate “movement” over the past decade are the same foundations now partnered with the Climate Finance Partnership looking to unlock 100 trillion dollars from pension funds. I reveal the identities of individuals and groups at the helm of this interlocking matrix, controlling both the medium and the message. I take a step back in time to briefly demonstrate the ten years of strategic social engineering that have brought us to this very precipice. I look at the relationship between WWF, Stockholm Institute and World Resources Institute as key instruments in the creation of the financialization of nature. I also take a look at what the first public campaigns for the financialization of nature (“natural capital”) that are slowly being brought into the public realm by WWF. I reflect upon how mainstream NGOs are attempting to safeguard their influence and further manipulate the populace by going underground through Extinction Rebellion groups being organized in the US and across the world.

With the smoke now cleared, the weak and essentially non-existent demands reminiscent of the 2009 TckTckTck “demands” can now be fully understood.

Some of these topics, in addition to others, will be released and discussed in further detail as addenda built on the large volume of research.

Once were Green

lastmanstanding

Talking of her here is an email I sent to each Green MP recently. Apologies for any threadjacking;

Subject: HOW THE “GREY BEARDS” HAVE DESTROYED THE PLANET
Checking out at the supermarket, the young cashier suggested to the much older woman that reusable grocery bags were a good idea as plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.
The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this ‘green thing back in my earlier days.” The young cashier responded, “That’s our problem today – your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.” She was right our generation didn’t have the ‘green thing’ in its day. Back then, we returned milk bottles, lemonade bottles and beer bottles to the shop. The shop sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So, they really were recycled. But we didn’t have the “green thing” back in our day. Grocery shops bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we re-used for numerous things, most memorable besides household bags for rubbish, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school), was not defaced by our scribbling. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But too bad we didn’t do the “green thing” back then. We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have a lift in every supermarket, shop and office building. We walked to the local shop and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go half a mile. But she was right. We didn’t have the “green thing” in our day Back then, we washed the baby’s Terry Towelling nappies because we didn’t have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 3 kilowatts ……. wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids had hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.
But that young lady is right; we didn’t have the “green thing” back in our day. Back then, we had one radio or TV in the house – not a TV in every room and the TV had a small screen the size of a big handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of Scotland In the kitchen. We blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We pushed the mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right; we didn’t have the “green thing” back then. We drank from a tap or fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the “green thing” back then. Back then, people took the bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their Mums into a 24-hour taxi service in the family’s $70,000 People Carrier which cost the same as a whole house did before the “green thing.” We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances and we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pub! But isn’t it sad that the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the “green thing” back then?

We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to piss us off…especially when the “advice” is being offered by a tattooed, multiple pierced smartarse who can’t work out the change without the cash register telling them how much it is!
-----------------

RC

Thanks for sharing.

The baby boomers popularised the environmental movement. They were also far more connected to nature as a lower percentage of Kiwis lived in urban settings.

Today caring for the environment has been hijacked by politically movitated city dwellers born to a life of extreme privilege

Germany's green targets.

German CO2 Reduction Targets “Completely Illusionary,” Comments German National Daily

By P Gosselin on 9. May 2018

Game over for green energies and CO2 reductions?

Journalist Daniel Wetzel of German national daily Die Welt here presents a devastating commentary on Paris Accord and Germany’s so far “illusionary” CO2 reductions targets. The German failure is a signal that could have significant global consequences.

Wetzel not only calls the targets illusionary, he also believes the existing Energiewende (transition to green energies) is “at an end”.

2030 target completely illusionary

According to Wetzel, “The Energiewende and climate change are not among the priorities of the government” and that Germany reaching its self-imposed targets is achievable only if “everyone were forced to switch off every boiler, oven, motor. Completely illusionary.”

Lots of talk, no action

While German political leaders like to continue pretending they are taking real action to combat climate change, the reality is that the German government has been rolling back subsidies for green energies such as wind and sun over the past years. And many localities have made the permitting of wind parks far more stringent.

The days of unfettered support for green energies are over.

Germany’s CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas emissions in millions of tonnes (Source: UBA Federal Office of Environment)

The result: Germany has not reduced its CO2 equivalent emissions for close to a decade (see chart above). Wetzel writes that everyone agrees that it is unrealistic to think that Germany will somehow make the sudden downward trend turn.

German Energiewende “at the end”

The Die Welt journalist adds: “Practically all renowned environmental analysts and government experts have already determined that the German Energiewende structurally has reached the end and that a system change is needed.”

Humans burning fuel one million years

In his commentary Wetzel also reminds that humans have been using fire for some one million years, and that it cannot be expected that they will just stop doing so during the course of one single generation.

Wetzel compares the Energiewende to the Apollo space program, which put man on the moon after 12 years and 120 billion dollars of investment. He notes that compared to the great transformation which Energiewende would entail, this was peanuts.

He warns that implementing the Energiewendecould cost the country a back-breaking three trillion euros (without mentioning the impact on climate would be negligible) and doubts the public would ever accept such a large-scale, draconian transformation of society.

German credibility takes a blow

Wetzel also comments the Germany’s failure to make the 2020 targets has tarnished the country’s image as a leader in climate protection, and adds: “The coalition agreement and the German Federal Budget for 2018 robbed all remaining credibility.”

In short Germany’s is not serious about reducing CO2.

Environmental groups and the Potsdam Institute, for example, are fuming, yet keep insisting it’s still not too late and achieving the target is still possible. But Wetzel injects sobriety and realism: “In the meantime we know that Germany will not only fail resoundingly to meet its self-imposed 2020 targets, but also those of the EU itself.”

With Germany as Europe’s largest economy, and regarded as a role model for all things green, the country’s failure would send a devastating message to the rest of the continent and the world: The Green Revolution was mostly a dream and was in fact never attainable. If tech-savvy Germany can’t do it, who can?

“No reality basis”

Yet, German officials continue to insist they can meet the 2030 target! But Die Welt’s Wetzel notes that doing so would mean Germany cutting it’s CO2 equivalent emissions by some 40%, or 350 million tonnes, within the next 12 years. That would mean radical and painful transformations. Recall that Germany has not managed to emissions at over the past decade (see chart above). Wetzel asks: “How credible is this target?”

Die Welt’s Wetzel summarizes:

The feasibility rhetoric of policymakers as a rule has no reality basis.”

Finally, he reminds that Germany going it alone will never work, and that climate protection has to be “organized internationally – or not at all”...

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Just some comments

Georg Thomas 9. May 2018 at 9:12 PM | Permalink | Reply

I liked the below paragraph from the German article, as the author puts his finger on a remarkable feature of the Energiewende that the German population is surprisingly insensitive to:

“Obwohl sich die utopischen Annahmen zur Zielerreichung Jahr für Jahr in Luft auflösten, gab es keine Nachsteuerung, kein Controlling. Über eine ganze Dekade hinweg erfolgte keine Revision der Aufgabenstellung, keine Überprüfung der Prämissen …”

My rough translation:

“Even though the assumptions underlying the feasibility of the Energiewende evaporated year after year, no corrections were made, and there was no controlling. During the course of a decade no efforts were made to revise the definition of the project and reexamine the project’s premisses …”

Frightening this is: reason suspended, a religious mania, a paroxysm reminiscent in its bumbling way of Hitler’s erratic conduct of war.

What I find most worrisome is the absence (until recently) of open controversy and political opposition concerning the Energiewende. It is almost as if (many) Germans are glad to have found a higher cause that entitles them to sideline pesky democracy.

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P Gosselin 9. May 2018 at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Reply

That part reminded me of the Soviet Union, where they pretended everything was working just fine, and that little things could just be ignored. However, everyone knew nothing was working, but no one dared or was willing to admit it

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Georg Thomas 9. May 2018 at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Reply

I can see your point. Mind you, the average German doesn’t seem to have matured yet to the point where he understands that the system doesn’t work.

Also, what the above quote points to is that pluralism is critically diminished and democracy isn’t working as it should. It’s a dangerous indicator that irrationality, a religious mania, if you like, prevails.

In a functioning democracy such blatant contradictions and absurd errors as accompany the Energiewende are quickly picked out and fiercely challenged.

It is not a good sign that this isn’t happening in Germany.

Green dreamers are weaving baskets in the dark

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/janet-albrechtsen/green-dreamers-are-weaving-baskets-in-the-dark/news-story/4a17b417b568d6f1ab28ebdf63139a08

History is littered with failed experiments. The hippie experiment of the 1960s and 70s never turned into anything more than a fashion statement. While the outfits survived, it turns out most people would rather shower daily, live in their own houses and not take recreational drugs.

The kibbutz experiment in Israel was a sweet utopian dream of communal living that tanked too. It turns out that people expect to be rewarded for effort, rather than carry freeloaders who refuse to share the load.

Even that “progressive” stalwart at the ABC, former 7.30 host Kerry O’Brien, was forced to report on the end of a “remarkable experiment” back in 2015 when the misguided ideology of Israel’s oldest kibbutz, Degania, was dismantled.

After almost 100 years, 85 per cent of Degania members voted to abandon its collectivist dream in favour of a simple principle: individuals should be paid according to effort.

Let’s hope it doesn’t take 100 years to wake up to the utopian renewables energy experiment undertaken by state Labor governments and wholly supported by the federal Labor Party. Sadly, there are few signs that the green dreamers at the national broadcaster understand the harsh reality of these renewable energy policies. After a 10-week taxpayer funded break, commentators on ABC’s Insiders were back at it, trying to dream their way out of facts, basic reason and common sense.

When asked by Barrie Cassidy to what extent was the blackout in South Australia due to renewables, The Australian Financial Review’s Laura Tingle said, “well, none”. The Guardian’s Lenore Taylor propagated the same dream, saying “renewables aren’t causing the blackouts”.

• MORE:ALP bid to ease energy pressure

Like a modern-day version of the Mamas and Papas, Tingle and Taylor are so busy reworking the hippie lyrics of California Dreamin’ into South Australia Dreamin’ they refuse to see an experiment crashing down around them.

There’s one thing worse than a bunch of deluded commentators who treat green energy as a religion and Insiders as the church where they get down on their knees and pray. And that’s the South Australian Labor government. Prior to leaving on a trade mission to the US last year, SA Labor Premier Jay Weatherill said South Australia risked becoming like a “rust-belt” industrial state in the US if it didn’t change its economy. Weatherill’s changed economy is one powered by 40 per cent of renewable energy and the results are in.

Weatherill’s renewable energy policy has turned out to be the biggest policy hoax in the modern era. It is not transforming the economy: South Australia sits at the bottom of the economic performance table in this country. It is not creating jobs: South Australia has the highest unemployment rate in the country. It is not driving investment: companies big and small are rethinking their commitments to the state and others have already pulled back from expansion. And that says nothing about the businesses who will not consider opening up in the state.

SA Water Minister Ian Hunter crowed last year that “South Australia is proud of its role as a living laboratory, leading the way to a low-carbon economy”. That leaves the people of South Australia bumping around in the dark like laboratory rats while men in white coats express pride in a failed experiment.

What are they proud of? That the lights keep going off in homes across the state? Proud that they cannot guarantee cheap, reliable and secure energy to businesses, small and large? South Australia is turning into a rust-belt state because of Weatherill’s changed economy. In December, the lights went out again; the response from the SA Treasurer to business was blunt: build your own back-up, baseload power station.

After the latest blackout last week, the state Labor government was quick to blame energy market structures. No doubt, the market needs to be finessed. But why would a government leap headlong into what it describes as a renewable energy experiment before the right market structures are in place?

It beggars further belief that a government genuinely concerned about its people would rush into an experiment, without considering that intermittent wind energy creates serious engineering risks for managing the stability and reliability of the power grid. When the ABC’s Chris Uhlmann raised these engineering questions last year, he was harangued and mocked as the new face of the anti-wind lobby. The national broadcaster took delight in leaking to The Guardian that complaints had been received about Uhlmann’s reporting.

Talk about post-truth. The further blackouts last month and this month expose the hoax of a prosperous green energy driven economy. The stark difference between feeling good and doing good is now irrefutable. It doesn’t feel good to be unemployed, or out of business, as the myth of green prosperity explodes. It doesn’t feel so good to have your electricity turned off in the summer heat or the winter cold. It doesn’t feel so good to be subjected to the Left’s utopian dreams that end up hurting the poor the most.

As The Australian revealed on Monday, electricity prices have spiked 106 per cent over the past decade, outstripping the rate of inflation, making power bills the biggest slug to the household budget. And South Australia ranks as one of the states with the highest power bills.

Last week, opposition climate change and energy spokesman Mark Butler accused the Turnbull government of playing politics over energy. That’s a bit rich coming from a bloke whose party, state and federal, is playing ideological games with the future of the Australian people to satiate its left flank and secure Green preferences. In any case, SA Labor and federal Labor, with its own 50 per cent renewable energy target by 2030, have gifted the Turnbull government one heck of a political weapon. And they know it.

That’s why there are small signs of Labor panicking, even admitting that its ideological experiment, like Israel’s kibbutz movement, is being trumped by reality. After the SA blackouts last week, the West Australian Labor Opposition Leader Mark McGowan ran for the hills in the middle of WA’s election campaign, refusing to outline its own renewable target despite signalling at a conference in October last year that it supports a 50 per cent target by 2030.

Meanwhile, Weatherill last week admitted his state needed more baseload energy. That’s a no-brainer given the blackout during Adelaide’s sweltering heat occurred when wind dropped to 2.5 per cent of supply.

Even Butler said there needed to be a proper balance of energy sources, an admission that SA’s current energy source balance is entirely out of kilter. On SA’s leap into the renewables unknown, Butler said, there was always going to be a jurisdiction that led the way. That policy rush hasn’t worked well for the people of South Australia. And it’s not working for Labor. The only question is how much more evidence will it take for Labor’s hasty and ill-conceived green energy experiment to be deemed a policy and political disaster.

janeta@bigpond.net.au