Monty Python territory

Peter Smith has an entertaining Quadrant piece on an Australian government plan to bet its energy future on wind and sun.


Page after Page of Fanciful Futuristic Bumf

The Australian government takes a polarised view of the climate-change hoax. First, it will bring “more frequent and extreme weather events that will impact ecosystems, infrastructure and the built environment, food production, health and global security.” Yet, second, it will bring opportunities. To wit, “Australia is in a strong position to benefit from the global transition to net zero…with some of the world’s largest reserves of critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt and rare earth elements [and] With more abundant wind, sun and open spaces Australia can generate energy more cheaply than many countries.”

The two quotes above are from the latest Intergenerational Report, which purports to describe what the next 40 years will look like. I will come back to the second of the quotes. The report has been extensively covered in the media. References have been made to the first such report, issued in 2002, and its failed forecasts. A popular choice is that first document’s forecast that Australia’s population would hit 25 million by 2040. A miss by a mere 22 years; the target having been reached in August 2018.

The are two reason why intergenerational forecasting exercises are useless. First, government ministers and their apparatchiks who compile them are inclined to the naive belief that their policies will work. Behind this naivete is a flawed recollections of past failures. Second, and most importantly, life happens way beyond the term of the prevailing government.


The whole piece is worth reading as a reminder of the extent to which government policies rely on forecasts going well beyond timescales for which anyone could conceivably be held responsible. In this case, an assumption that the world isn't likely to go nuclear.


Having determined to abandon coal, the foundation of Australia’s competitive advantage in generating electricity, the brilliant idea is to embrace a form of energy which the world is effectively on the brink of leaving behind. To think, as per the Intergenerational Report, that this “could lead to exports of energy-intensive green metals, and electricity through undersea cables and hydrogen,” is ultra delusional. Which country is going to buy Australian electricity made from wind and sun, delivered through an undersea cable? Chris Bowen’s territory, did I say? This is Monty Python territory.