Powerlines

There’s an old line, attributed to the American humorist Josh Billings: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

That sentiment cuts to the heart of my conversation with Matt Ridley, zoologist, science writer, hereditary peer, and long-time observer of the triumphs and follies of human reason. Ridley’s latest book, Birds, Sex and Beauty, returns to his roots in evolutionary biology, as he argues that the seductive allure of coloured feathers matters more than whether it signals health or strength.

But our conversation focused less on the evolution of plumage, and more on the strange devolution of some science into dogma. The trap is certainty, and the hubris it breeds. Ridley does not denigrate experts; he simply reminds them they are not oracles. They’re human. And humility, not certainty, is the foundation of science.

“A little humility about forecasting the future,” Ridley told me. “There are no experts on the future… on the future of the economy, the future of epidemics, the future of climate. There are no experts on that. And so, for me, that's what science has to do. It has to save the reputation of the real engineers who solve real problems by distancing themselves from the modellers who are little better than snake oil salesmen and astrologers.”

After initial pessimism in his youth about the state of the environment, Ridley became a rational optimist. There are many problems in the world, but when humanity is left free to trade and think, it tends to muddle its way toward improvement. Today, however, optimism is the act of a contrarian.

“We’ve been deluged with the pessimistic side of the world... We’ve been told again and again that disaster is just around the corner. And in fact… there have been spectacular changes in human wellbeing. The most striking example is that half the world’s population was living in extreme poverty — that’s less than $2 a day in today’s money — when I was born, and now that number is something like eight percent.”

The biggest catastrophe on the pessimists’ menu is, of course, climate change. Ridley believes it is a problem but one that has been framed in increasingly apocalyptic tones. It has become an end-times theology. The doom loop is self-reinforcing: politicians want excuses, activists want urgency, the media wants drama, wind and solar carpetbaggers want cash, and an increasingly compromised scientific establishment wants funding.

The problem isn’t that carbon dioxide doesn’t matter. But the nuance is lost in the noise. Ridley, who has spent decades reading the literature, notes that warming is occurring at the lower end of projections. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change itself is cautious about attributing specific weather events to climate change. And yet, everywhere, we hear a recital of the scariest verses from the Book of Revelation.

“The media is far too ready to rush to attribution... And in addition to that, they are leaving out the other side of the story: that carbon dioxide is the food of plants.”

There are echoes here of another crisis: COVID, and the way that modelling, consensus, and censorship replaced debate.

“The scientific community has yet to realise just how much of its reputation it destroyed in the COVID years.”

Masks, transmission, lockdowns, lab leaks — sceptics weren’t allowed to ask the questions, and the expert answers were often wrong. Ridley co-authored a compelling book on the lab-leak hypothesis as the origin of the pandemic and, for that, he was labelled a conspiracy theorist.

This isn’t just about climate. Or COVID. It’s about trust. Because trust is the currency that holds a society together and once spent, it’s hard to earn back.

We are also being offered absurdly expensive solutions. Britain, Ridley notes, now has the highest electricity prices in the developed world. The costs fall hardest on the poor and subsidies flow to the wealthy. Politicians, bureaucrats and activists forecast endless declines in renewables prices as power bills soar and business cashes in:

“We’ve got an enormous crony capitalist industry growing up around the climate scare.”

At the end, we return to his passion, his latest book on birds. Here, nature tells a deeper story: that beauty can emerge for its own sake, and that poetry can sometimes hold more wisdom than prose.

At Powerlines, we try to find people who still value reason over rhetoric. Matt Ridley is one of them. He hasn’t lost faith in science. But he has seen what happens when science becomes a faith.

https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780008645540/birds-sex-and-beauty-the-extraordinary-implications-of-charles-darwins-strangest-idea/

Earlier this year, I spoke with Dr. Bjorn Peters—a physicist-turned-energy economist who once believed in the promise of Germany’s energy revolution. Back in 2008, as a senior adviser in Deutsche Bank’s asset management arm, Peters helped direct billions of euros into wind and solar projects.

But the deeper he looked, the more sceptical he became about the wisdom of building an electricity grid around weather-dependent generators.

“It means decentralized energy production, but not decentralized energy supply. And that’s one of those very fundamental flaws in thinking that led us astray.”

Wind and solar are intermittent and highly correlated. They flood the grid in fair weather, then vanish together in cloudy stillness. On their own, they will never deliver 24/7 power. And there is still no economical way to store electricity at the scale and duration needed to keep a modern industrial society running.🔗 IEA – Grid Stability and Storage

It’s why Germany has exported a new word: Dunkelflaute—“the dark doldrums”—describing periods when there is little sun and no wind across large regions, sometimes for days or even weeks.🔗 Dunkelflaute

At such times, all of the vastly distributed energy gatherers need a 100 percent backup from gas, coal or energy imports. And what’s true in Germany is true always and everywhere. So what was sold as a bold vision has become a cautionary tale.

The Anti-Nuclear Crusade

Peters corrected me when I suggested the policy began with good intentions. He explained it started in the 1970s, driven by the anti-nuclear politics of the Green movement. The aim was not to decarbonise, but to dismantle powerful, state-run utilities—and that meant shutting down nuclear power. That exercise in national self-harm that is now complete.

“The targets of the energy transition were much more about social change than climate policy. That’s why they phased out nuclear first—something you can’t explain to anyone nowadays.”

What followed was predictable. And devastating.

Germany has now spent more than €700 billion—over a trillion Australian dollars—trying to reinvent its power system.🔗 Germany's Energiewende

The outcome?

* Electricity prices among the highest in Europe.🔗 Eurostat 2023

* Industrial decline, with companies fleeing Germany.🔗 BASF and chemical sector cuts

* Emissions per kilowatt-hour much higher than in nuclear-powered France.🔗 [IEA 2022 – France vs Germany power sector emissions]

* And a shift from power exporter to net importer—buying nuclear energy from France after shutting down its own fleet.🔗 Germany becomes power importer

Germany’s grid shopfront was green, but its industrial engine ran on Russian gas. When the invasion of Ukraine cut that supply, the facade cracked—and the fragility of the system was exposed

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Industry Stayed Silent

Peters sees this not just as a policy failure, but a failure of courage.

“Because of this element of fear, the industry leaders didn’t dare to speak up—or did it in the wrong way. They communicated much more to their peers, but not to the broader public.”

Politicians, meanwhile, remain wedded to illusions. But change might be coming.

A study shows that several of Germany’s shuttered nuclear plants could be restarted—two with minimal effort, and seven more with moderate investment. The economics are compelling: a typical plant generates around €1 million a day in profit.🔗 Nuclear Restart Potential in Germany

Peters helped launch the “Nuclear Pride Coalition” in 2018 and believes public opinion is shifting. 🔗 YouGov Germany – Nuclear support polling, 2023

Net Zero a Road to Nowhere

Most of Europe, the UK, and Australia continue to pursue decarbonisation at great cost. But the world’s biggest emitters—China, Russia, India, and the United States—have no intention of following the same timeline.

So Peters believes this all points to one end.

“These types of climate policies with their fallacies are not sustainable.”

Dr. Bjorn Peters:🔗 linkedin.com/in/björn-peters-5996777b

Since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, when the world first committed to tackling climate change, carbon emissions have continued to rise every year with just two exceptions: the 2009 global financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic.In both cases, emissions fell only because of wrenching economic dislocation. And while much has been said about the energy transition, the numbers tell a more stubborn story. Little has changed in how much fossil fuel we burn. What has changed is where.

According to the Statistical Review of World Energy 2024, global primary energy consumption rose by two percent in 2023, reaching yet another all-time high. Fossil fuels still supplied 81.5 percent of the world’s primary energy — barely down from 81.9 percent the year before.

Coal production hit a record high, and China consumed 56 percent of it. [p. 5, SRWE 2024]

But that was 2023. This year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) revised the figure upward. In its Global Energy Review 2025, the IEA reported that China consumed 58 percent of the world’s coal in 2024 — another record. Despite huge investments in wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, and gas, China’s surging electricity demand drove coal use up by 1.2 percent. IEA 2025, p. 6 – PDF link

In 2023, coal supplied 60 percent of China’s electricity. Wind and solar contributed just over 15 percent — well below the combined share of hydro and nuclear. When it comes to China’s total primary energy, fossil fuels accounted for 82 percent, with coal, oil, and gas dwarfing wind and solar, which together delivered barely five percent. Put another way: for every unit of primary energy China got from wind and solar, it got sixteen from fossil fuels.

Renewables decorate the China story, fossil fuels power it.

🛢️ Fishing For Power

Yet there is a near constant mismatch between energy headlines and energy realities. Every year, record-breaking capacity additions in wind and solar dominate the news. But “capacity” is not the same as generation.

In 2023, the world added 346 gigawatts of solar and 115 gigawatts of wind capacity — historic numbers. But these generators are off more often than they are on. Solar panels typically operate at 10–25 percent of their installed capacity, and wind averages around 35 percent. In contrast, fossil fuel plants often run at 50–90 percent capacity factors. [SRWE 2024, “Capacity vs Generation” section]

A better term for wind and solar is "energy gatherers." Like casting a net for fish, you get what nature gives.

When it comes to global electricity generation, coal still leads at 35 percent, followed by gas at 23 percent. Oil accounts for about two percent. Wind, solar, and hydro combined now provide 30 percent, but wind and solar together make up less than half of that — under 15 percent. [SRWE 2024, Electricity Generation data]

But electricity is only part of the energy story. When looking at total energy — including transport, heating, and industrial use — wind and solar account for just 8.2 percent of primary energy consumption. Nuclear contributes 4 percent, and hydro 6.4 percent.

Fossil fuels remain the backbone of the global energy system.

🌍 Emissions Keep Climbing

Both reviews confirm that energy-related greenhouse gas emissions reached a new record in 2023. The Statistical Review of World Energy reports a 2.1 percent increase, pushing total emissions over 40 gigatonnes for the first time. The IEA’s 2025 Global Energy Review echoed this trend, attributing it in part to China’s record coal consumption

“China now consumes nearly 40% more coal than the rest of the world combined,” the IEA wrote. “This drove global coal demand to a new high.” [IEA 2025, p. 6]

The rule of thumb? Ignore the words. Follow the fuel. Judge nations by their actions, not their press releases.

⚠️ Conclusion: This Is Not a Transition — It’s an Addition

Fossil fuels haven’t been replaced — they’ve been joined by unreliable newcomers. Weather-dependent energy needs constant backup from hydrocarbons to keep the grid stable, or to take over entirely when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. Coal, oil and gas still carry the weight of the world.

What we call decarbonisation is, in many cases, just offshoring. Industrial production and emissions haven’t disappeared — they’ve been exported, then reimported as goods made in coal-fired economies like China and India.

Activists in developed countries may cheer the closure of coal plants and the rise of wind and solar, but the overall effect is marginal. Fossil fuels are simply being displaced geographically, not phased out.

We’ve made enormous noise, spent trillions, and passed countless laws. But emissions are up. Coal is up. And the share of energy provided by oil, gas, and coal remains almost unchanged after 30 years of climate summits.

The rhetoric changed. The reality didn’t. So, what do you call a movement that promises transformation but delivers the status quo? A performance. Not a transition. And the costliest illusion in history.

See the full story here.

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“Hope is not a strategy.”

With that one line, former Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo cuts to the heart of Australia’s strategic complacency. In a wide-ranging interview for Powerlines, Pezzullo lays out a devastating account of how successive governments have failed to prepare the nation for a far more perilous world.

The warnings were there. In 2009, Pezzullo led the drafting of a Defence White Paper that recognised the accelerating militarisation of China — a build-up that “could only have one purpose... to give themselves the option to take on the Americans militarily.” That paper proposed a significant naval expansion, including a new class of 12 submarines.

“By 2030,” Pezzullo says, “we would have had a force getting close to 12.”

Instead, the plan was shelved after then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was toppled in 2010, and a decade of political churn followed.

The result? A nation without a functioning deterrent. When three Chinese warships recently sailed around Australia and conducted a live-fire drill in the Tasman Sea — the first shots fired by a non-ally in that region since the Japanese in the 1940s — Pezzullo says the most likely explanation is chilling:

“It probably was a rehearsal for a wartime combat operation.”

And Australia was unable to track them with its own navy because, he notes, “our two floating petrol stations are both broken at the moment.”

Worse, Pezzullo reveals that we now lack basic defensive capabilities.

“We have no mine countermeasures capability.”

If an adversary mined our ports, we’d have to “call someone... to clear out a channel into our harbour.” On missile defense, the story is just as bleak:

“We have no interceptors.”

Some weapons of war already lurk, invisibly, inside our borders.

“Pre-positioned malware... designed to be animated, to be activated so that you take down critical infrastructure. Water, power, energy, air traffic control.”

The next war, he warns, may start with a blackout.

“And then ships start exploding off one of our ports.”

Pezzullo does not believe war is imminent, but says it is prudent to plan for the “reasonable worst case scenario.” He calls for a complete reimagining of Australia’s strategic posture. We must be able to “hold out,” as Britain did in 1940 — with a population and a policy prepared to endure. We must be equipped to defend ourselves, on our own.

“We should not expect anyone else to shed their blood in our direct defence… if we're not prepared to shed our own blood.”

He urges investment in civil defense, energy resilience, cyber security, missile interception, and industrial self-reliance. Pointing to Sweden’s public campaign preparing citizens for conflict, he asks:

“Could you imagine the government here... launching a pamphlet on civil defense called ‘If War Were to Come’?”

It’s a warning from a man who’s spent a lifetime in the engine room of the state and who recognised threats before others did. Australia has been told. Whether it listens now is a test not just of government, but of national character.

In far north Queensland, in the ancient forests of the Atherton Tablelands, Steven Nowakowski has spent three decades fighting to protect the natural world. A wilderness photographer and lifelong environmentalist, he once stood as a Greens candidate. Now he finds himself in open conflict with those who claim to be saving the planet.

Steven and I met in 2024, while filming The Real Cost of Net Zero.

Steven’s epiphany came through a camera lens. He began documenting the destruction wrought by industrial wind farms — roads carved through forests, ridgelines stripped bare, habitats fragmented in the name of climate salvation.

“The end game here is to achieve Net Zero,” he says. “But pushing roads and clearing forests to build wind turbines is an oxymoron. The first thing we should be doing is keeping trees in the ground.”

One project, the Chalumbin Wind Farm, would have cleared more than 500 hectares of forest next to a Wet Tropics World Heritage area. Steven helped rally the local community to stand against it.

“I was shattered when the government wanted to come in and put these big windmills in,” said traditional owner Tom Gertz. “They didn’t consult with the traditional people. Everybody’s got to understand, you never gonna come in here and desecrate my country.”

Against the odds, the campaign succeeded. The federal government rejected Chalumbin, deeming the environmental risks too great. The battle was over but the war had only just begun.

Steven has turned his skills as a cartographer toward mapping the scale of what’s coming. Just in Queensland, 3,127 turbines are in the planning pipeline but as Steven says that number grows by the week. Thousands more turbines will march through New South Wales, Victoria, to Port Lincoln in South Australia and across the Bass Strait to Tasmania as the east coast grid is transformed, along with the landscape.

And that’s only the generation side of the ledger. All of this scattered supply — wind and solar farms spread across the continent — must be stitched together with new transmission.

“We’ve identified around 10,000 kilometres of transmission that needs to be built by 2050,” says Australian Energy Market Operator CEO Daniel Westerman. “About half of that in the next decade.”

Think about that. Every fourteen hours, another turbine. Every day, 22,000 new solar panels. This is what it takes to meet the government’s 2030 renewable energy target.

“The Australian public have got no idea,” says Steven. “I gotta laugh. They’ve got no idea what’s in store.”

They will. These turbines won’t be tucked away in deserts or outback plains. They’ll march across the Great Dividing Range, loom over farmland, cut into native forests, and tower above once-pristine ridgelines.

Changing the landscape forever, from sea to shining sea.

This is what Net Zero looks like when the rubber hits the road and the bulldozers hit the bush.

You can see (and buy) Steven’s beautiful wilderness pictures here.

As Australians head toward a federal election, former Senate president and High Commissioner to Canada Scott Ryan offers a measured but clear-eyed assessment: the old certainties in Australian politics are breaking down — and the international order that once underpinned them may not return.

In a wide-ranging interview, Ryan provided a granular, state-by-state breakdown of the electoral battleground. He sees Victoria as central to any hope the Coalition has of forming government — a state where the Labor government is deeply unpopular, but the Liberal Party remains at historic lows.

New South Wales is just as complex. In outer-metropolitan seats and areas with significant Muslim populations, new dynamics are at play — including the rise of faith-aligned independent candidates whose preference flows could prove decisive. Ryan notes that the two-party preferred metric is becoming less useful in an election increasingly shaped by minor parties and independents.

Queensland, once the Coalition’s power base, is now home to rising Greens strength in inner-Brisbane, volatile regional contests, and a landscape that looks more fractured than ever. He sees Tasmania, South Australia, and the Northern Territory as largely status quo contests, while warning that even a small national swing could push Labor into minority — though a Coalition majority would require a historically large shift.

Ryan believes we are entering a long era of fragile governments. Major party loyalty is declining, electoral volatility is rising, and preference flows — especially from the Greens to Labor — are becoming kingmakers.

“Winning primary votes is no longer enough,” he says.

He ties this fracturing at home to a wider story abroad. Ryan reflects on his early political awakening during Victoria’s early-1990s recession, where his father’s job loss taught him how policy decisions shape real lives. That experience led him to embrace the potential of reform — and he credits Australia’s success in liberalising its economy during the 1980s and ’90s without widespread social breakdown to a balance of free-market reform and social equity mechanisms like HECS and Medicare.

Ryan then shifts focus to the broader collapse of the postwar order, especially in light of Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. In Canada, where he served as High Commissioner, Trump’s return has completely overturned a 20-point Conservative lead and resurrected the Liberal Party, thanks to tariff threats and a new sense of vulnerability in U.S.-Canada relations.

He warns that Trump’s economic nationalism has direct implications for Australia, with our major trading partners all subject to high U.S. tariffs (although, of course, this changes by the day). More broadly, Ryan sees the unravelling of the rules-based order as a turning point: if America can no longer be counted on, Asia’s middle powers — including Australia — may be forced to look elsewhere. And China, he notes, is already filling the vacuum.

Still, he ends on a note of cautious national pride: Australia, he says, has absorbed mass migration, resolved sectarian divides, and built a strong, flexible political culture.

But the test of that resilience — at home and abroad — may be just beginning.

At Thursday’s National Press Club energy debate, I asked Energy Minister Chris Bowen a simple question: “Have electricity prices risen on your watch?” Once again, he refused to concede it, saying only that prices were higher than the government would like.

On that, we can all agree.

But here’s the point. In December 2021, Bowen released modelling that claimed Labor’s energy plan would reduce household electricity bills by $275 by 2025. It was a centrepiece of the last election campaign. In April 2022, I warned him in an interview that the modelling was flawed and would not survive contact with reality.

This is the interview.

When the interview ended, I urged Bowen to stop telling people their power prices would fall. Now, there’s no reason a politician should accept the advice of a journalist — but I was not alone. In private, I understand at least one senior energy executive issued the same warning.

Bowen was undaunted. He — and many others in Labor — repeated the pledge in 2022, 2023, and all through 2024. He repeated it as electricity prices spiked. He repeated it as federal and state governments began spending billions in subsidies to protect consumers from massive hikes in their power bills.

Then, this year, the rhetoric began to shift. In an interview on Sky, Bowen claimed electricity prices were falling. It’s axiomatic: if prices are falling, the government wouldn’t need to subsidise them. Then it emerged that this breathtakingly cynical claim rested entirely on the morphine of energy subsidies suppressing the real pain of actual price hikes. The Commonwealth’s share of those subsidies now stands at $6.8 billion.

The spin cycle drew in other ministers. On Budget night, this line appeared in the Treasurer’s speech: “Electricity prices went down 25 per cent here last year...”

Yet the Treasurer’s own Budget papers confirm this: “Without Commonwealth and state government electricity rebates, electricity bills would have been around 45 per cent higher in the December quarter 2024.”

Using Labor’s preferred measure — citing numbers not adjusted for inflation — electricity prices on the east coast have risen by 43 per cent for residential bills and 53 per cent for businesses since Labor came to power.

Consumers are now expected to be grateful for having their taxes recycled as “cost of living relief.” The arsonist demands thanks for waving a garden hose over his own inferno.

On Thursday I asked Bowen to confirm one fact: “Electricity prices are rising, aren’t they, Minister? That’s written into every power bill, isn’t it? And if you can’t admit that simple fact, why should anyone believe anything you say?”

It was a question aimed at piercing a thick fog of spin — and he dodged it.

Bowen’s first move was to claim he wasn’t sure what the question was. Then he accused me of editorialising — of having “strong views” and saying things on Sky News with which he disagrees. That’s true. I do. But facts are not feelings. And the truth is, energy prices have risen — not fallen — since Labor made its promise. That’s not my opinion. That’s a fact.

Eventually, Bowen conceded that prices are “higher than we’d like,” before pivoting to global woes: the war in Ukraine, international volatility, and other factors beyond his control.

The problem is, the things within Bowen’s control are the ones that will drive prices ever higher. Wind and solar cannot deliver 24/7 power. They will never set the price of electricity at times of peak demand. And the explosion in transmission and distribution costs has yet to hit household bills. The future, on Bowen’s preferred path, is ruinously expensive.

Thursday’s exchange was instructive. It wasn’t just about power prices. It was about trust. And one day, Bowen may learn that trust is the most important commodity in politics — and in life.

Later, I turned to the Opposition’s Ted O’Brien and pressed him on gas: how he plans to lower prices by moving excess gas in Queensland south when the pipelines are already full. His answer rested on infrastructure investment and a gas reservation policy. He admitted it won’t solve short-term supply problems, but argued that storage and prioritising domestic use could help over the next few years. Maybe — but power prices are unlikely to tumble on the basis of what we’ve seen from the Opposition so far.

Both sides are constrained by reality. Neither can promise to cut electricity bills. But only one side promised a miracle — and is now pretending they delivered it.

The video courtesy of Sky News Australia.

Ever stopped to think where your lifestyle comes from? How the modern world is made? How it runs?

Most of us don’t. Least of all the small group of activists that gathers outside Australia’s federal parliament on sitting days, surrounded by hydrocarbon-rich signs, demanding an immediate end to all fossil fuels.

One of their number identifies as a marsupial, kitted out in an ill-fitting polyester suit made from petrochemicals. S/he/it and the other millenarians congregate on a path made with cement sourced from a coal or gas-fired kiln, as they urge passersby to repent their carbon addiction or face oblivion.

One ominous black sign warns: Coal Kills Kids.

Let’s check how the kids were doing in BC: the era before coal. The Australian Bureau of Statistics records that in 1900 there were 103 deaths in every 1000 live births. A century later that number had dropped to a tick over five per 1000. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports that children born in 2022 can expect to live around 30 years longer than those in 1891.

There’s more than a casual link between widespread, affordable electricity and increased life expectancy. Of course, other factors help — like access to plentiful food and better medical care. And all of that depends on hydrocarbons, too.

As Canadian energy polymath Vaclav Smil points out in How the World Really Works, the four pillars of modern civilisation — cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia — are all made with and from hydrocarbons. Without them, the modern world collapses. Yet politicians and activists call for their immediate abolition, blind to what’s holding up the roof.

Smil’s message is blunt: hydrocarbons aren’t just a power source. They’re the material basis of your life. (Every politician should read his book — or at least the summary he wrote for TIME).

Even food is hydrocarbon-dependent. The synthetic fertiliser that feeds half the world was invented by Fritz Haber (in a profound irony he’s also the man who pioneered chemical warfare). His ammonia process uses atmospheric nitrogen and hydrogen derived from natural gas. Without it, billions would starve. So yes, you eat hydrocarbons.

You also wear them, drive them, and rely on them for medicine. Nearly 99% of pharmaceutical feedstocks are petrochemical-derived. Even the glue used by Extinction Rebellion protesters to stick themselves to roads is made from hydrocarbons. It’s the irony that binds.

Access to hydrocarbon energy is what separates rich nations from poor ones. It’s no coincidence that the UK’s industrial dominance was fuelled by coal, the U.S. by oil, and China’s rise since 1990 by all of the above. Today, China burns 58% of the world’s coal, 15% of its oil, and 8% of its gas — and its appetite for fuel marches in lockstep with its economic and strategic ascent.

Meanwhile, Germany’s trillion-euro Energiewende is collapsing under its own contradictions. It shut down nuclear, bet on wind and solar, and now finds itself burning coal again to keep the lights on. The result: the highest electricity prices in Europe, a rapid slide toward deindustrialisation, and rising public anger.

Climate change is real. But it’s not an existential threat. What is an imminent threat to our prosperity is dumb public policy — and Net Zero is as dumb as a bag of hammers.

The idea that Net Zero is achievable, affordable, and universally embraced is a dangerous delusion. Since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, global carbon emissions have risen every year — except during the global financial crisis and the COVID lockdowns. That’s the reality: emissions fall when economies crash. Otherwise, they rise.

Watch what countries do, not what they say. In 2023, global hydrocarbon use hit record highs. China, India, Russia — they will burn what we won’t. Under Trump, America will “drill, baby, drill.” Indonesia, Argentina and the countries of Africa will not follow the EU and Australia on a pathway to poverty.

So what are we doing?

We can harness the energy beneath our feet, stay rich, and use our wealth to adapt to a changing climate. Or we can impoverish ourselves — and still have to adapt to a changing climate.

To those who demand we tear down the foundations of modernity, it’s time to live your truth. Start with one day a week without hydrocarbons. No phones. No food from afar. No cars, flights, medicine, hot water or power. No… well just about everything that makes you rich and comfortable.

Call it Fossil Free Fridays. There’s already a TV show that models this lifestyle. It’s called Naked and Afraid.

Watch The Real Cost of Net Zero here:

“We're supposed to go along with shutting down our energy sector, shutting down our natural resources.”

In February, I sat down with former Canadian Conservative leader Candice Bergen, who detailed the absurdity at the heart of Canada’s politics: a government scorning the very resources that made the nation wealthy. It’s a story that should resonate in Australia, because we’re following the same script.

Bergen says that before 2015, Canada had a thriving oil and gas industry. Investment was strong, jobs were plentiful, and energy exports were a pillar of the economy. Then Justin Trudeau came to power. His government declared war on fossil fuels — imposing a federal carbon tax, cancelling major pipeline projects, and introducing legislation so hostile to development it became known as the “No More Pipelines Bill.” One partially built pipeline was nationalised using taxpayer money. Hundreds of billions of dollars in private investment fled to the United States.

Between 2015 and last year, Canada’s per capita Gross Domestic Product grew at just 0.4% annually, productivity flatlined, business investment collapsed, and the nation’s income fell from 80% of U.S. levels to just 70% — a wealthy country shrinking itself and declaring it a virtue.

And the energy industry bosses? They caved.

“They almost immediately had Stockholm syndrome and started to go along with the government,” Bergen told me. “We had the CEOs of the five major oil companies stand up and say, ‘Yes, we think a carbon tax is a good thing, and you’re right — we are kind of dirty, aren’t we?’ Then they would come to [Conservative politicians] and say, ‘We can’t say it, but would you please stand up and defend us?’”

So now, a country rich in resources imports oil on one coast, bans exports from the other, and penalises the very people who keep it running — farmers, truckers, miners, and energy workers.

When this interview was filmed, the Conservatives had entered the election year riding high in the polls. Trudeau had been forced to stand down, and his Liberal Party was in the process of installing former head of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, Mark Carney, as leader. Carney is now Prime Minister and the election is afoot.

I raised the prospect that President Donald Trump’s attacks on Canada might damage the Conservative cause, and Bergen agreed she was worried about it. So it proved to be.

Despite Trudeau’s resignation — and the dumping of the consumer carbon tax — the Liberal Party is now resurgent. Fuelled by a backlash against threats and taunts from the U.S. President, the Liberals have turned the election into a referendum on “Canada vs Trump.” The Conservative surge has stalled.

“The Liberals are quite happy to have this conflict with Donald Trump,” Bergen said. “When any country is threatened by anyone, the majority of its citizens don't like it.”

The same dynamic is now playing into Australia’s federal election, as an aggressive and unpredictable ally takes aim at friends and foes alike.

But Bergen’s central message — of a resource-rich country run by people who think resources are embarrassing — still stands. Canada and Australia are voluntarily surrendering prosperity and sovereignty to satisfy a global carbon-cutting agenda that major emitters like China and the U.S. are ignoring.

Canada is not a warning to Australia. It’s a mirror.

In 1998, fossil fuels made up 85% of the world’s primary energy. In 2023, they made up 81.5% — a drop of just 3.5 percentage points in 25 years.

And we’re told we can cut the remaining 81% to near-zero in the next 25.

That’s not a transition — it’s a delusion.

This short clip from our documentary The Real Cost of Net Zero looks at the sobering facts and ends with a telling insight from Meg O’Neill, CEO of Woodside Energy.

👉 Watch the full documentary here:🎥

In the film, I speak with engineers, executives, and energy realists about the true scale of the decarbonisation task — and expose just how wildly disconnected the green slogans are from physical reality.

The promises are grand. The numbers don’t lie.

If you care about energy, economics, or the future we’re stumbling into, this is worth your time.

Please share it. We need more realism, and less rhetoric.

Source: Statistical Review of World Energy 2024, Energy Institute.📊 See the full data set here