Frydenberg, IPA trolling renewables on ABC’s Q&A - again

The Coalition and the powerful right-wing lobby groups that help direct their policies show no signs of backing off in their campaign against renewables – or any other technology, for that matter, that might usher in a cleaner, cheaper and more reliable grid.

Monday night’s Q&A panelists, including federal energy
 minister Josh Frydenberg and, second from right, Simon Breheny,
the director of policy at the Institute of Public Affairs.

Craig Kelly has distinguished himself on EVs, a sweaty George Christensen on Facebook rails against anything Green or anti-coal, and Matt Canavan continues to wage a war on behalf of the coal industry.

On Monday, on ABC’s Q&A program, they were at it again: energy minister Josh Frydenberg and the Institute of Public Affairs teaming up to demonise renewables, and to propose some hopelessly unrealistic solutions to Australia’s energy trilemma.

It cannot go without comment.

Read the RenewEconomy story by Giles Parkinson - “Frydenberg, IPA trolling renewables on ABC’s Q&A - again.”

(Check out the Q&A program)

Shark Tank’s Steve Baxter joins climate science deniers and Islamophobes for Australian LibertyFest

Steve Baxter, climate science
deniers, Islamophobes, and other
libertarians gather at LibertyFest.

What do you get when you bring together some of Australia’s most fervent climate science deniers with anti-Islam activists, fledgling right-wing political groups, and an American “free market” Libertarian?

The answer, apparently, is the one-day conference titled LibertyFest scheduled for Brisbane this Saturday.

Two mainstays of Australia’s “fever swamp” of climate science denial, Professor Ian Plimer and Jennifer Marohasy, are set to kick-off the proceedings on Friday evening.

Organizing the conference is Brisbane-based group LibertyWorks, founded 18 months ago by local businessman and libertarian Andrew Cooper.

For those uninitiated, libertarians will tell you governments should be small and stay out of people’s lives, regulations should be drastically scaled back, and economic markets left to function with little to no regulation.

Read the RenewEconomy story by Graham Readfearn - “Shark Tank’s Steve Baxter joins climate science deniers and Islamophobes for Australian LibertyFest.”

Have we got time to have right-wing deniers 'lose'?

John Quiggin is Professor of Economics
at the University of Queensland. 

It seems unlikely that those of us who advocate for the mitigation of greenhouse gasses will ever really succeed in convincing others of that need, rather those from the “business as usual” brigade will simply “lose”.

According to a report on Inside Story headed “Climate change and the intellectual decline of the right” argues those on the intellectual right are becoming devoid of arguments, or at least dependent upon vacuous reasons.

Writer John Quiggin says no arguments seem to sway right-wing politicians and commentators in the United States and Australia.

“Will we have to wait for demography to do its work?” he asks.