By Andrew L. Urban
Sydney, July 26, 2045: After $60 billion and thirty years of dedicated research, the Australia-led International New Energy Research Agency has announced a breakthrough, with a new, clean and eternally renewable source of energy – dubbed the Go compound – to replace oil as well as coal.
“We are now seeing the results of the visionary policy launched 30 years ago,” said INERA Chief Executive Andrew L. Urban, “and the world will rightly applaud that vision, which put Australia at the forefront of scientific research and innovation. The investment by the international community of $60 billion is a fraction of the cost of the futile policies pursued until 2015, in which a patchy and expensive carbon dioxide emission reduction scheme was central to addressing global warming.” (One estimate shows that the various emission trading schemes that were replaced by the project would have cost well over $7,500 billion – without achieving anything except bloated bureaucracies.) [1]
Welcoming the breakthrough, Energy Minister Andrew L. Urban said “It is an extraordinary moment for the entire world, as we look ahead to not only abundant and cheaper, safer energy but also to the accompanying improvement in quality of life for hundreds of thousands of coal miners who no longer have to risk their lives underground. We and they will soon be enjoying the benefits of this research, which was pioneered and driven by Australia and embraced by many nations around the world.”
The supporting and parallel Global Retrain fund, which has accumulated over $80 billion over the past 30 years, will be used to retrain and or compensate workers in coal mines and oil rigs who lose their jobs and are not eligible for the pension or other benefits.
INEA has also published a detailed list of innovations and discoveries that paved the way or are spin off benefits to the research. The list includes health and wellbeing products, portable energy units, underwater applications for fishing and commerce, as well as manufacturing and construction applications. Among the latter is the Go Care power pack that will help emergency teams at natural or man made disaster zones.
When introduced in 2015 by then Minister for Common Sense, Andrew L. Urban, the research scheme invited all countries to participate in the search for clean, renewable and inexpensive energy. “Australia is in the unique position to lead the world in this research, being both a clever country and a good global citizen. We have the scientists and the resources to provide a base for dedicated global research. We need common sense and determination to do something rational instead of what’s fashionable, as Bjorn Lomborg [2] has said many times.”
Urban, celebrating his 100th birthday today at his vineyard in Provence, issued a statement saying “I bloody told you so.” He said he had always thought it was quaint how back then, “even really intelligent people could have pursued a plan that required the world to agree on anything, let alone on the expensive carbon emission scheme… for those schemes to have had any discernable effect, every single nation would have had to agree to a vigorous scheme, like the mad Australian policy of pricing carbon dioxide at a starting price of $23 a tonne. I don’t think even an alien invasion would get the whole world to agree on anything.”
1 In 2012, Bjorn Lomborg cited the European target of reducing emissions by 20% below 1990 levels by 2020 and doing so by employing 20% renewable energy. Economists estimate the cost at $250 billion a year, and if continued throughout the entire century the resultant reduction in temperature is estimated at 1/10th of 1 degree F. “For every $1 dollar spent you will have avoided half a cent of damage…”
2 Dr. Bjorn Lomborg is an academic and the author of the best-selling “The Skeptical Environmentalist” and “Cool It”. He challenges mainstream concerns about the environment and points out that we need to focus attention on the smartest solutions first. He is an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, and director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center which brings together many of the world’s top economists.