Long live Chris Bowen!

Long live Chris Bowen!

 Andrew L. Urban

As you pop your eyeballs back in place, lift your jaw off the floor and pour a stiff drink after reading the headline, please read on; you will come to join the chorus with my wish for his longevity. He deserves to be compos mentis for as long as possible. I don’t want Chris Bowen to avoid confronting the outcomes of his tenure as Climate Change and Energy Minister.

(Sky News reports (April 13, 2025) that “Independent polling shows Energy Minister Chris Bowen is at risk of losing his seat in Western Sydney.”)

I imagine the retired Bowen sitting in front of a TV screen, his eyelids forcibly kept open like those of Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), in front of a permanent loop of devastating scenes to cure his horrible, antisocial behaviour. And our TV cameras are trained on him (Bowen).

“When one character speaks of our willingness to “sell liberty for a quieter life,” it strikes an ominously familiar chord,” writes one critic. We might rework that statement without losing its essence, as ‘… our willingness to sell energy security for an unrealistic and unaffordable life, it strikes an ominously familiar chord.’

In my wishful thinking, an old Christopher Eyles Guy Bowen (born 17 January 1973), long retired from public life, is forced (daily) to watch the consequences of his ‘antisocial behaviour’ as the demented Climate Change and Energy Minister during the dark days of the dreadful Anthony Albanese Labor Government of the 2020s.

At the time, it was common knowledge among geologists and climate scientists (but ignored by those on the payroll) that CO2 in the atmosphere is not a driver of warming. Natural climate variability does the job.

Demonising fossil fuels was always a political tool.

Soon after Bowen disappeared from the solar panelled political landscape (clutching the miniature model of a wind turbine from his ministerial desk), the volume of outrage against his policies that shoehorned renewables into our daily life began to swell. The mainstream media was reporting the environmental disasters of wind turbines and solar panels with images of landscapes torn apart – on the front page. TV news added moving images … moving pictures that moved people to tears.

That reporting had begun in the mid 2020s, as shown in video reports by Nick Cater in Queensland’s wonderlands turned into badlands, showing the severe destruction of forests to make way for vast wind turbines and solar panel fields. In Gippsland, too. The Chinese were sending Bowen thank you cards …

In his retirement, Bowen was forced to watch the screen as civil disobedience over energy prices and unworkable renewables had overtaken scenes of Nazi sympathisers supporting Hamas terrorists.

But as he moaned in embarrassment, his mouth twisted in anguish and his eyes tried desperately, unsuccessfully to shut out the continuing news of the economic devastation that constituted his legacy. Businesses large and small had closed down, farmers were battling to recover as the giant wind turbines were being taken down (with the attendant misery of disposing of them) and electricity prices remained unaffordable while efforts were underway to open (or reopen) coal fired power stations. Single handedley, Chris Bowen had squandered Australia’s well being and wealth.

By then, with over 50 years of climate alarmist hysteria since June 1988 and the boiling end of the world come and gone several times, the narrative was shattering. But the damage to the standard and quality of life had been done. Chris Bowen had become the object of hate and ridicule even before his political demise. (And then, those in the Labor ministry who were once his colleagues, took the Kevin Rudd-bloodied baseball bat to Bowen and blamed him for their loss of power … as it were.)

Books came out which collated all the articles and cartoons that harassed and attacked Bowen while he was minister, urging him to cease and desist his mad rush to renewables over fossil fuels. Facts and fears had no effect on his anti-emission zeal. And the Prime Minister was glued to Bowen’s zealotry.

The big problem Bowen and his department faced was that they could not produce any carbon dioxide = warming facts to support his policies. They had no credible defence. Meanwhile, commentators and genuine scientists tore up his hubris-infested justifications for what he was doing in energy policy. At the very least, many felt, electricity bills should be marked “From Chris Bowen”.

The coup de grace, coincidentally delivered on his 80th birthday in 2051 (a year after the Net Zero 2050 target year was passed uneventfully), was the news that despite the growth in global fossil fuel emissions in the years since 1988, global warming had barely increased. Seas hadn’t risen. Greta Thunberg had moved on (to praise Hamas and denounce Israel). And the planet had grown considerably greener. The alarmist narrative was thrown into the dustbin … the most expensive rubbish bin the world had ever seen. And he, Christopher Eyles Guy Bowen, had contributed so strenuously to the enormous cost. For no benefit.

Oh yes, I want Chris Bowen to live long in that knowledge.

Andrew L. Urban is the author of Climate Alarm Reality Check (Wilkinson).