Green Academics Blames “Climate Injustice” for Energy Price Hardships – Is It Rising Because of It?
Essay by Eric Worrall
You can’t make this happen – the very groups whose renewable energy advocacy helped create skyrocketing prices are now blaming their hardship on “climate injustice”.
Climate change affects some of us much harder than others – but affected groups are fighting back
Published: October 14, 2022 10:40 am AEDT
- Naomi Joy Godden VIce-Chancellor’s Research Fellow, Center for People, Place and Planet, Edith Cowan University
- Kavita Naidu Researcher, Edith Cowan University
- Keely Boom Industry Research Fellow / Expert, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney
All around us, climate change is exacerbating existing disadvantages. In Australia, we just need to find low-income households are hit harder by rising energy and fuel pricesand flood response in northern New South Wales is related to the needs of People with disabilities.
These are examples of “climate injustice”. In our research on climate change and social justice in Australia, we’ve found again and again that those who have experienced marginalization are the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
But importantly, these are often the groups that lead social movements that demand equality and equity for current and future generations at the heart of climate action.
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Of course, the real culprit is the promotion of renewable energy. Even Australia’s ABC recently admitted that the green transition is driving up energy prices.
Of course, we already know that promoting renewables will send prices skyrocketing for a long time. President Obama let his cat out of his pocket in 2009.
How do we lower the price of energy?
The solution to skyrocketing prices and alleviating difficulties for the poor is obvious. We have to lower the price of energy. And the easiest way to lower the price of energy is stop the promotion of renewable energy cannot afford and bring coal.
New South Wales, where scholars are based, sitting on coal mountain – one of the largest deposit in the world.
But coal prices are skyrocketing – how will a return to coal help?
The answer to that puzzle is that not all coals are created equal. A lot of Australian and American coal is brown coal.
No one wants to buy low quality brown coal, it is full of impurities and moisture, and is simply not worth shipping. But a power plant co-located with a brown coal mine doesn’t have to care about transportation costs, the fuel cost of their power plant is the cost of running a fleet of bulldozers to shovel the brown coal into the furnace.
Brown coal powered the industrial golden age of Australia and the US, by providing the Western industrial powers with the cheapest energy on Earth. There is still a lot of brown coal that can be recoveredmore than enough to revive Western manufacturing, and bring back jobs and prosperity to areas where a steady, well-paying job is a distant memory. great.
Eventually, even brown coal will run out, but that’s a matter of another century. Trying to foresee problems and solutions of the distant future is a stupid game.
All we have to do, to help the poor with their energy bills, and restore Western manufacturing, is choose to prosper again, choosing politicians we believe in ideas to apply solutions that we know will work.
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