• Oct 31, 2024

Australia's Energy Future

"real wages are for a lot of people, especially in the bottom half of incomes are lower than they were a decade ago"

Norway is often compared to Australia because it is a country also blessed with mineral wealth. They've got public assets in sovereign wealth funds of hundreds of 1000s of dollars per person. Australia by contrast exports gas supplies for virtually no royalties.

"Our gas prices used to be about a third of the world price. That's before we had exports. Then we allowed the unrestrained export from Gladstone."

"The United States, for example, is a very big exporter, growing rapidly, but they haven't allowed exports, except in circumstances in which they are satisfied that gas will be available at a low price to domestic users."

"Our gas prices went from being a third of the US price to now about three times the US price."

"Norway recognized that their assets owned by the people of Norway forced companies developing them to pay the value that was being given away, and their people are in a very different position to ours."

If you paid any tax in 2022-23, you paid more than all of these multinational gas corporations did on $36 BILLION income, exporting Australian gas from QLD.

Really makes you think. #auspol pic.twitter.com/SKdMyxroGz

— Australia Institute (@TheAusInstitute) November 1, 2024

Australia vs Norway

Population

Quality of Life

Values from 0 (bad) to 100 (very good)

Economy

Source: from World Data
https://www.worlddata.info/country-comparison.php?country1=AUS&country2=NOR

The Problem - the warming climate

Source: https://www.jtelectricalcontractors.com.au/what-is-the-greenhouse-effect

Renewables vs Nuclear

Renewables are 95% cheaper than they were. Nuclear is now more expensive due to the recent accidents.
That should be the end of that conversation - in Australia it is not!

Countries like Korea, Japan and parts of Europe have to go sources like Nuclear in their energy mix because they do not have the possibility with renewables as Australia has.

The simplistic argument that these countries use Nuclear why can't we is pointless - they fail to mention there are no other sources of clean energy available to them.

How to change the mind of an ideologue.
My @smh @theage cartoon. pic.twitter.com/d5k3ABP5CI

— The Cathy Wilcox (@cathywilcox1) August 6, 2019

Building seven nuclear power stations (as some would suggest) and have the government pay for them is our future wealth at stake.
If it was economically viable the private sector would have done so already.

How are we going to store renewable energy?

Using the same technology that turned mobile phones into what they are today - incremental improvements.

Media Influence in Australia

Court proceedings in the US (Fox settled a defamation suit by voting machine company Dominion for $787.5m US) revealed the personal political preferences of Lachlan Murdoch - he was very pro Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

Up until this revelation he had kept his personal political leanings to himself.

The Murdoch media is etremely right wing - possibly because it was more profitable to do so on purely a profit motive.

Do the punters realise that the right wing rhetoric may just be a path to more profits for the Murdoch media empire?

Conclusion

If we allow our renewable clean energy future to be shouted down. If we allow unfetted access to mineral wealth not to be appropriately taxed.

If we don't actually find a way of taxing carbon as Ross Garnauts suggests in his book "Let's tax carbon".

Australia and individually we will be much poorer. How does a country as vast and wealthy as Australia have a housing crisis?

By not managing your wealth properly.

High fliers.
My @smh cartoon. pic.twitter.com/qaAyWexUb4

— The Cathy Wilcox (@cathywilcox1) October 30, 2024