Climate follies: more than half a billion new spending to keep Joe Biden off our backs

The Government is desperate to appear to be doing more in the run-up to Joe Biden’s Climate Summit for Thursday US time. While professing support for decarbonisation, the Prime Minister is looking to spend money in ways that do as little damage as possible to the economy.  Commendably, Scott Morrison has said Australia would not, “look to reduce our own emissions by shutting down our existing export industries like agriculture, aluminium, coal and gas”. 

Per capita, Australia is already the world’s biggest spender on wind and solar, two expensive electricity sources that have negative value because, supported by subsidies, they drive out lower-cost coal and gas. Our subsidy-supported national spending on wind and…