Prime Minister Ardern said we are being “fleeced”. More like we are being “skinned”, wool and all. It seems to slip her mind that half the “fleecing” is being done by her government. They are grabbing $1.45 of that $2.65. Having ratcheted up spending the government now needs all the revenue they can get their hands on. Having captured a moment’s limelight for making the claim she has moved on, yet again to another publicity podium, unable to deliver any outcome of substance.
Our electricity prices are also escalating.
Spot prices went berserk over the
winter. Those chickens are coming home
to roost sooner rather than later. Natural
gas prices are also up. The CPI and
inflation numbers look worse by the day.
The recently announced 4.9% is only the beginning. Brown outs and blackouts are a reality. It is not just the claims of low lake levels,
of limited generation on cold, still nights; its load balance, it’s the urgent
need to replace the Cook Strait cables, its Auckland voracious appetite for
power when its mostly generated in the deep south, its gas running out, its Huntly
closing, its environmentalists stopping hydro development. The future looks grim.
Australia is also facing growing energy price escalation and
supply problems. Electricity prices are
up nearly 12% in the last 12 months to a record average charge of 34.41 cents
per kilowatt-hour. Melbourne fuel prices
have reached new highs with the cost of a fill up, $60 up on 18 months ago.
Energy prices in Europe are relevant. In 12 months the natural gas price has jumped
from 10.85 Euros per MWH to 51.20 Euros.
That is almost a 400% increase in a year.
The rot set in last winter when Mother nature thumbed her
nose at the hysterical climate change crowd by lowering temperatures well below
average. Demand shot up, reserves
collapsed and Putin rode the windfall from his pipeline all the way to the
bank. European leaders humiliated
themselves by begging the Russians to increase supply and hold prices down.
Cutting coal use and finding that wind turbines are
underperforming is not helping. Petrol
prices are rising and predicted to go much higher. In the Netherlands they are paying an
eye-watering NZ$3.12 a litre. Denmark
pays NZ$2.90. Petrol prices are expected
to rise another half a Euro or NZ$0.95 over the next 12 months.
Europe is starting to pay a high price for trying to remove
coal as an energy source. It is not just
Europe, either. World demand for all
types of energy is rising. Politicians are
caught between green group pressures, demands from the IPCC, the UN, along with
some businesses trying to outbid each other to be “green” and their voters –
households and small businesses struggling with mounting bills on essential
items. Fuel price increases cartwheel
through the economy affecting all items in a home budget.
Europe’s cap and trade ETS scheme is also contributing to
rising energy prices. Those countries
with a higher than average exposure to coal are hurting. The Polish Prime Minister is loud in his
condemnation of EU policy.
Politicians know that all surveys of voters show that the
population is in favour of climate change being taken seriously but then vows
to not paying a dollar towards the wild and extravagant counter proposals to
stop warming. It’s the old syndrome of
everyone wanting to go to heaven but no one wanting to die. Now the subsidies are being offered by
Governments determined to save their skins.
France has their "chèque énergie", Spain is reducing taxes on
fuel, Italy is offering help to homes and Boris has been given a strong message
from vulnerable MP’s.
This coming winter in Europe will be interesting. If there is another cold spell and if Putin
blackmails the Europeans again holding out on sending more gas down the
pipeline, anger and frustration could spill out onto the streets.
Amidst this turmoil and pain a gaggle of globalists,
elitists, politicians, crazed greenies and a few scientists will blithely jet
into Glasgow, into an isolated bubble of fantasy, high priced hotel rooms,
glitzy conference facilities, electric cars charged on diesel powered
generators, totally remote from the chaos their policies are causing. They might as well be on another planet.
They will not be footing the enormous costs of their brazen
extravagance. We will – the
taxpayers. And pay we will again and
again, more and more as their unnecessary, centralised controls drive energy
prices higher and higher.
Owen Jennings, a former Member of Parliament and President of Federated Farmers, maintains a keen interest in ensuring agricultural policies are sensible and fit for purpose.
9 comments:
Fossil fuels/Nuclear = reliability + flexibility + high energy density + lower cost (for fossil fuels)
Renewables = unreliability + unflexibility + low energy density + high cost + large land use + grid fragility
Just like Europe, NZ is heading down the renewables path in the mistaken belief that you can reverse the laws of thermodynamics and produce large amounts of affordable, reliable power with high entropy systems. It will end badly, as a cold winter in Europe and the UK will amply demonstrate.
Our Cindy in her quest for world adulation is trying to make NZ a world leader in climate change. Like her handling of Covid it will end up being an embarrassing failure at great cost to our country. She has stopped coal mining in NZ and gas exploration, result 1.5 million tons of dirty Indonesian coal being imported ( a record) to produce electricity ironically to help run those clean electric vehicles. Even if we stop altogether burning fossil fuels and every cow stops farting the tiny amount that we will save in carbon emissions will have absolutely nil, zero effect on world carbon emissions. But no doubt Cindy and her Green socialist mates will be happy as we become a world leader. Climate change is a natural occurrence the big threat is over population, pollution and the degradation of our oceans and clean water. In 30 years from now when the great climate catastrophe still hasn't happened it will be acknowledged for what it really was the biggest hoax ever perpetrated upon mankind to try to force through a new world socialist order.
The one thing that the "globalists/environmentalists" fail to talk about is the root cause of the worlds problems, ie. overpopulation. The population level of the world at the moment, is completely unsustainable looking ahead into the future and is only keeping its head above water because of the availability and use of fossil fuels. It is time to start the conversation about "making less people". If we ,as a world population, do not start working on this mother nature will. Maybe she already has.
Harry
The best way to cut world population is by bringing people out of poverty, giving them access to power and education and increasing their standard of living. As has happened in the developed world, with a massive decline in birth rates. That only happens with affordable, reliable energy, which is the foundation of all modern societies.
Most projections, based on this model, have world population peaking around 2050 then declining considerably by 2100.
Taking the world back to pre-industrial energy technologies like wind and sun will only keep much of the developing world breeding, consuming their forests and hunting their wildlife for food.
The climate alarmists plan to remove fossil fuels will NOT work. All the laws of Physics show that quite clearly. It will also be an environmental disaster because these technologies hide a massive carbon footprint and are totally dependent on coal, oil, iron ore, heavy and rare earth metals for their manufacture.
The pain awaits all of us, industries will close up business's will fail farmers will walk of their farms, food will become so dare that we may have people starving on the streets, all based upon some bullshit computer modelling, our world has been snookered into a black hole with no way out.
I agree with DeeM with repect to the way of controlling population. In fact, it is already happening with practically all countries other that sub-saharan at or close to a fertility rate 2.1. Indeed, China is currently on 1.5 but that is partly because of their now defunct "one child" policy. As DeeM points out, developed economies have lower birth rates. Even the United Socialist Nations agrees that the world population will plateau in the latter jalf of this century and will then fall rapidly. Some sources suggest the plateau will commence about 2050. Interestingly, one of the reasons the developed world population is not rapidly declining right now is because of immigration and we "oldies" are hanging in there and refusing to die off...!!!
Dee M, Kiwi and Unknown, I tend to agree with what all you guys say but the world will be an uninviting place to live with 10 plus billion people and fossil fuels will run out eventually. At the moment we have almost nothing that can replace them in the short term. Maybe nuclear energy sources of one kind or another. I see the Green cohort want to have one third of our light motor vehicle fleet electric in the next few years. My schoolboy math's tells me that will require another Clyde Dam at least. I sailed past two 35000 ton coal ships unloading in Port of Tauranga yesterday which will only keep Huntly going for a couple of weeks and that's just to keep our lights on.
We live in hope.
Good on you 5th generation.
We are already working hard on the reducing of the over population of the earth. Hundreds, most probably thousand and very likely millions of people will die. SO, don't worry about over population. Worry about our children being poisoned with so called "vaccines" which are not even vaccines.
That's it let the good times roll.
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