The current energy debate is farcical. What does this government stand for?

How bizarre can the energy debate get? Every time I think that we have heard it all, reached the “bottom”, or whatever, even stranger things happen – now almost daily.

Malcolm Turnbull.

Our political leaders have now spent years scoring points on each other, and attempting to shift the blame, indeed, doing everything they can to avoid addressing the issue of rapidly rising electricity and gas prices. Yet, ironically, they are collectively to blame.

In all this “colour and movement” neither the government, nor the opposition, has yet produced a believable and deliverable energy policy. That is, a policy to specify the path forward to a low-carbon society, demonstrating a genuine capacity to lower power prices and to guarantee supply.

Read John Hewson’s opinion piece on The Guardian - “The current energy debate is farcical. What does this government stand for?”

Gambling on extinction

George Monbiot.

It seems now that gambling on extinction is to become as common as betting on one horse besting another.

George Monbiot told the Guardian readers that the British gambling company, Ladbrokes, had been offering odds on the conservation of various fish stocks.

In the column: “Betting on Extinction”, Monbiot told readers, “Again and again over the past few decades, our fishing industry has clamoured noisily to cut its own throat, then responded with astonishment and fury when it collapses as a result. Is there a clearer example of being blinded to your long-term interests by short-term greed?”

So now it seems that in some bizarre sense, we can profit from species extinction, rather than be clearly worse off.