VANGUARD - Expressing the viewpoint of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
For National Independence and Socialism • www.cpaml.org
(Photo: Victorian farmers protest action. Source: www.vicff.org.au)
The political brawl over Net Zero has found voice. The coalition turned away from targeting net zero carbon emissions in November.
Now Barnaby Joyce and Matt Kanavan aren’t the only dogs barking at the renewable transition passing them by. The Coalition has joined the chorus of howling canines.
At heart is political opportunism. The carry on has in mind drawing in people sick of being pushed around by big corporate monopolies chasing the green dollar.
The political would-be’s see an opening where people are peed off about having some huge corporate money factory dumped on their farm, dominating their local beaches, scarring their local landscape, hitting local wildlife for six. All the while, power bills head skywards despite government assurances of cheaper power ahead.
Power bills are just one side of the problem.
Great ribbons of farmland are being clear-felled, stripped of vegetation for hundreds of kilometres, making way for new high voltage power lines. Farm equipment reliant on sat-nav can’t be used beneath the lines and they limit aerial crop spraying, loading overworked farmers with reliance on 20th century methods in a 21st century industry.
(St Arnuad residents attend a meeting at the local hall to learn about the VNI West high voltage power lines project. Source www.vicff.org,au)
Seafronts and hilltops are being taken over as estates for windfarms owned by huge corporates, most of them foreign owned. People across the country are finding themselves stomped over as renewable robber barons build their green empires. The greenback is the nirvana they chase not the environment.
In the case of farmers, significant financial inducements are payable for easements on their land. The process of consultation and negotiations are about as fair as union consultations in most workplaces. Government administrators have increased legal and police powers and punishments in their kitbag, and they wave that about.
Farmers for Climate Change reckon NSW financial inducements may be OK. But with a lot of family farmers on the brink of insolvency, reductions in the land they can graze or cultivate, and restrictions on their activities, can be an existential threat to their living. Transition plans needed by coal mining communities are also required for those farmers, where the lines are necessary for the nation’s programs.
That’s not what the Coalition, One Nation, and other reactionaries propose. They opt for the nuclear option, both in fact and metaphorically. They have no resolution for those existentially threatened other than more climate change, keep the emissions.
Opposing Green Capitalists doesn’t mean backing fossil capitalists
There is danger in moves by political opportunists to become the voice of people oppressed by green capitalists and state agencies working to force people to let the green capitalists to have their way. For donkey’s years the Coalition and One Nation leaders have stood with big corporates, working to divide people.
People know things need to be done to deal with climate change. Those being trampled by corporate monopolies chasing the green dollar are rightly up in arms.
The opportunists are keen to see the resisters abused as NIMBYs. They have paid party hacks to organise across the country for the last couple of years against windfarms and to promote nuclear power. They have long pursued advantage from mine closures as renewables gain ground. Not that they’ve done diddly squat about transition for communities, in government or out. They talk about city slickers looking down their champagne glasses in disgust at people in the regions closing their gates.
Resistance to being frog-marched into ceding land to ‘green’ capitalists under oppressive laws and harsh punishments has become a cause celebre for climate change deniers to organise people into reactionary organisations.
Division among the people is their game. They are one arm of the divide and conquer quest in their cynical parliamentary games.
Robber Barons brawling over who governs chasing ‘green’ and ‘brown’ dollars
Some of the green robber barons, have jumped into the political game, touting renewables and transition to Net Zero.
“Twiggy” Forrest is well known for touring the globe selling green steel, the idea, not actual steel, to be made using hydrogen produced from renewable energy. There hasn’t been one tonne of ‘green’ steel produced yet. God only knows how many solar panels and wind turbines that will take.
Front and centre are tariffs and sanctions on steel which isn’t green, making existing steel plants - his future competition - obsolete. Huge new plants will have to be constructed. More of Forrest’s iron ore will be needed for that. Competitors like Gina Rinehardt would have to avoid being boycotted out of existence. For the time being, Forrest gets a premium from investors for the potential windfall, if he can pull it off.
Mike Cannon-Brown is another local boy made good, a multibillionaire in IT monolith Atlassian. He was partnering with Forrest and others in Sun Cable, a $35 billion renewables project set up in 2020 to produce electricity 800 kms south of Darwin. The initial idea was to export electricity to Singapore. It would be the biggest solar farm in the world, 120 square kms, 4,300 kms of undersea cabling, and enough battery power to run a million EVs.
Cannon-Brown was one of the biggest funders of the Teals election campaigns Climate 200 fund – putting $2.5 million in with his Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar.
Forrest is the other big holder in Sun Cable. The two multibillionaires fell out in 2023. Cannon-Brooks wanted to pursue the original idea. Forrest wanted SunCable to power his ‘green’ steel and ammonia production. The two capitalists clashed over whether to power AI server farms (Cannon-Brooks) or steel mills and chemical plants (Forrest). The brawl exposed these ‘green’ capitalists’ rush for the green dollar bonanza.
On the other side, mining billionaires Clive Pamler and Gina Rinehardt, put cash into campaigns to stop action on climate. Climate action builds up their competition, doesn’t send a zac their way, destabilises their markets and threatens to make their customers’ old tech operations obsolete.
Former PM Keating’s advice to not get between a Premier and a bucket of money, applies even more seriously to capitalists. They’ve been known to start wars over such things. There’s no love lost between Forrest and Rinehardt nor Forrest and Cannon-Brooks.
Neither side is baulked at the prospect they are having to stomp over people to get their way.
Green capitalists’ tyranny doesn’t mean scientists are wrong
In standing against being swamped by the scramble for the green dollar, don’t fall for the global heating denier trap.
Be clear about it. The climate is changing, getting more extreme. Bigger storms/cyclones, hotter summers and more intense bushfires, more and bigger floods are just a beginning. People need things done about it, flood mitigation, seawalls, lower carbon and other emissions. Seaside and mining communities need transition plans and support.
The scientists aren’t wrong because some capitalists are tyrannically walking over people, devastating the environment, and dumping people in coal towns and old power stations and neglecting eroding seaside communities. The problem is the “Twiggy” Forrests, the Mike Cannon-Brooks - the capitalists trashing farms and country, constructing new landed and sea estates, clawing their way over us to get at the bonanza of green dollars in renewables industries.
The rest of us are left to pick up the bill as we try to keep out the cold in winter and run the air-con in summer, or rebuild after floods and bushfires.
People aren’t just being trampled in the rush. They are standing up. They defy bureaucrats, police and gaol. They are right to rebel against ‘green’ capital.
Stand up to ‘green’ capitalists’ land grab.
Support struggle for community and farmer transition plans