Because Net Zero, as currently pursued by Labor and the Greens, is not a climate policy.
It is a national economic suicide note.
The arguments against Net Zero are overwhelming, practical, and already visible across Europe — where the experiment is collapsing in real time.
And Australia is marching straight down the same path unless someone has the courage to pull the handbrake.
Below are the clear, undeniable reasons Net Zero must be abandoned — not politely questioned, not gently “rebalanced,” but rejected as the destructive, unworkable fantasy it is.
🔹 1. Net Zero Destroys Energy Security
Europe went all-in on wind and solar — and the result has been catastrophic:
- Coal and nuclear shut down prematurely
- Gas exploration halted
- Intermittent renewables left the grid exposed to weeks-long energy shortfalls (“Dunkelflaute”)
Australia is copying the same blueprint.
Labor is shutting down our coal stations without any proven replacement, gutting our energy security and placing us in permanent dependence on foreign gas imports and batteries that do not yet exist at industrial scale.
This isn’t strategy.
It’s delusion.
🔹 2. Renewable Intermittency Can’t Run a Modern Nation
Renewables are “unreliables” — entirely dependent on backup baseload power they do not provide themselves .
Batteries?
Today’s best large-scale batteries store 6–8 hours, while low-wind periods can last two weeks.
Australia is betting its national grid on a storage technology that:
- does not exist
- cannot exist at the required scale
- and is nowhere near cost-viable
This is not “transition.”
This is ideological gambling with the nation’s power supply.
🔹 3. Net Zero Causes Massive Electricity Price Increases
This is not theory. It’s now lived reality.
Europe’s electricity prices exploded — industrial prices up 5–7 times those of the US and China .
Germany and the UK — once industrial powerhouses — are now cautionary tales.
Here in Australia:
- Electricity prices have soared by 37% in 12 months
- Inflation jumped to 3.8%
- Every good and service is more expensive because energy sits at the base of every supply chain
Labor's claim that “renewables are the cheapest form of energy” has been obliterated by real-world evidence.
Cheap-on-paper renewables create sky-high bills once you add:
- backup gas
- transmission expansion
- short life-span asset replacement
- forced early closures of reliable plants
- storage that doesn’t yet exist
This is why prices rise every time renewables penetration increases.
🔹 4. Net Zero Wrecks Industry and Exports Jobs
Europe shows us the future if we continue down Labor’s path:
- Chemical industries gone
- Steelfactories closing
- Car manufacturing collapsing
- Businesses fleeing to the US where energy is cheap
- Entire supply chains hollowed out
Marshall warns that Europe is “wiping out its industrial base” in the name of Net Zero .
Australia is smaller, more vulnerable, and more exposed.
We won’t just lose manufacturing — we’ll lose:
- mining
- refining
- smelting
- heavy industry
- food processing
- agriculture
regional towns built around energy-intensive work
This is unilateral economic disarmament.
Labor and the Greens constantly invoke environmentalism while pushing the greatest environmental destruction in Australian history:
- T
- housands of kilometres of transmission lines bulldozed through farmland, forests and heritage land
- Wind turbines plastered across rural Australia
- Solar farms consuming entire regions of arable land
- Whale populations disrupted by offshore wind
- Birds and wildlife killed by turbines
- Europe is already recognising this disaster.
Australia is simply arriving late to the bonfire.
🔹 6. Net Zero Makes No Global Difference
This is the most important truth of all:
Australia could disappear tomorrow and global emissions would not change.
China builds two new coal plants per week.
India adds two per month.
Both have Net Zero deadlines so far in the future they can be safely ignored for decades.
Neither intends to cripple itself the way Europe has.
Yet Labor wants Australia — a 1.2% emitter — to commit economic suicide to impress nations who laugh at the idea.
Every wind turbine, solar panel, and battery requires:
- massive mining
- diesel machinery
- fossil-fuel-based metals and chemicals
- shipping across the world
- gas or coal backup during downtime
“Clean energy” cannot exist without “dirty energy.”
The irony is inescapable.
🔹 8. Net Zero Punishes the Poor Most
Marshall is right: Net Zero is a policy that immiserates the poor .
- Higher electricity prices
- Higher food prices
- Higher rent and mortgages
- Lost jobs
- Lower wages
- Higher cost of living everywhere
Rich elites cope.
Ordinary Australians pay the price.
🔹 9. Australia Risks Becoming Europe 2.0
Europe tried to “lead the world.”
Nobody followed.
Now Europe is scrambling back to coal, reopening gas fields, and begging the US for LNG.
Australia is still pretending this model works.
Labor is pushing us into the same catastrophe — but with even fewer industrial strengths to lose.
🔹 10. A Sensible Energy Policy Is Possible
Australia can embrace
- Clean, affordable next-gen nuclear
- High-efficiency, low-emission coal
- Domestic gas
- Hydropower
- Renewables only where economically justified
- Technology-driven emissions reduction, not ideology-driven deadlines
This is not “anti-environment.”
It is pro-reality.
The LNP Must Hold the Line — No Backsliding
Net Zero is collapsing everywhere it has been tried.
It is not “the future.”
It is a failed experiment.
The LNP must argue forcefully, unapologetically, and with total clarity:
-
Net Zero destroys jobs.
-
Net Zero raises prices.
-
Net Zero weakens the nation.
-
Net Zero does nothing for the climate.
Australia cannot afford another decade of this fantasy.
The Opposition has finally stepped away from a policy that never made sense.
Now it must go further:
Expose it.
Discredit it.
And bury it for good.
Before Labor buries the country along with it.
Please watch Paul Marshall's presentation at this year's ARC conference in February. I have used his arguments in the above blog.
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