After telling us for years that there’s no point in setting a target unless you know how you’ll get there, Morrison has announced that Australia is committed to net zero by 2050.
It’s been quite a struggle to pull off this remarkable achievement. First the government had to work out the plan before they could decide where they were hoping to end up. Yes, it’s hard to do that because if you don’t know where you want to go, you don’t know which roadmap to pull out. However, after years of deliberation, the government has managed to find a way to agree with itself. Apparently this was the hard part but now we’ve managed to work out that this is a worthwhile thing, than we can relax knowing that technology will save the day and we don’t have to stop burning coal or ruin the weekend by buying an electric car. Of course, this is rather like continuing to smoke but insisting that even if you do get lung cancer there’s likely to be a cure before it becomes terminal, but at least it’s a strategy that works if your aim is to stop yourself from worrying too much about the possible consequences of your refusal to change your behaviour.
So what does this commitment actually mean. Well, it means that the government is committed to net zero by 2050 even though there’s no legislation in place.
It seems we won’t be doing anything in the life of this parliament or for the next ten years. In fact, it seems that what we have is a government which has committed some future government to actually doing something about net zero so it’s only reasonable that they don’t legislate anything because it wouldn’t be right to tie a future government down like that… Although there is legislation about tax cuts for high income earners in 2024.
And given that we now have a commitment, it’s only right that we should have a plan because weren’t we told over and over again that there was no point in having a goal unless we knew how we’d achieve it. Well, it seems that they do have a plan because I heard Coalition MPs attacking Labor as having no plan. If Labor don’t have a plan, it makes it hard for the government to steal the best bits and attack the rest until it’s decided that some of the bits they were attacking last week are worth stealing. Rather like the whole idea of net zero itself, which just a few short months ago was a wrecking ball that would destroy the economy but will now be the salvation of many, many jobs. In particular, they hope, the Prime Minister’s.
As I understand it, the Morrison plan is similar to many of his other plans:
- Make the announcement that there is a plan.
- Hold up a booklet with lots of pictures, numbers and words.
- Keep doing what you’ve always done and hope that something turns up that helps you to avert disaster. In this case, technology.
- Tell everyone how good it is to be Australian.
- Make a curry.
- Get photographed with Jen and the girls.
- Introduce something that’s controversial enough to get people talking but not so controversial that everyone thinks it’s a totally bad idea.
Anyway, Scotty’s gone to Scotland and Barnaby Joyce is the Acting PM, Gladys is telling ICAC that Darryl had no more access to her than any other MP which must have been a shock to Darryl who didn’t realise that she’d given out so many keys to her house, Tony Smith has resigned as Speaker insisting it’s got nothing to do with dissatisfaction with the government (an interesting comment in itself… if someone at your workplace quit but insisted that it wasn’t because the place was poorly managed and likely to collapse at any moment, you’d have to wonder!), but Tim Smith capped it all off by tweeting a meme which showed storms over Melbourne with the words: “Great weather for outdoor retail and dining Daniel Andrews?”
There is a bit of discussion about proposed changes to pandemic laws giving the Premier too much power, but if Andrews can control the weather, I think he already possesses more than a leader should have…
Mm, maybe Scotty should just give Dan a call and then we wouldn’t have to worry about the fact that the technology we have in our net zero is yet to be invented… If Tim “Donuts” Smith is right, Mr Andrews could limit warming with a click of his fingers.
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