BNEF has just released a paper called “Australia’s nuclear-powered distraction threatens net zero” I will link to it as soon as I can find a link. This is based upon articles about the article
Summary
The issue is not really whether a case could be made for nuclear in Australia, but whether the Coalition policies will deliver:
More emissions, and
More expensive electricity.
That would seem to be the case from the mess of their policy, and their repeated requirement that we trust them to give details after the election.
The plan, even if completely successful will certainly not add that much to Australia’s energy supply, and there is no point going with small amounts of nuclear if we are going to increase emissions through rolling back on renewables.
Political Obstructions?
Despite nuclear energy technology having been banned in Australia since 1998, under Coalition PM, John Howard, with three of the high population states also banning it, the federal Coalition opposition has proposed seven sites for nuclear plants which they claim could be operational as soon as 2035, which is improbable. As Bloomberg states, it will be “a slow and challenging” effort to overturn existing bans, and to force people to accept nukes on the sites selected without consultation.
Nuclear is expensive
Nuclear could reduce emissions, but it is usually a very expensive technology in markets with limited experience, unsupportive politics and uncertain regulation — such as Australia. We have already mentioned that cost overruns are normal even with experienced builders. Another problem is that people cannot be held to contract prices as we do not want cheaply built and unsafe reactors, so we have to assume they are not deliberately underquoting.
Renewables are cheaper and easier
The usual estimates are that renewables are cheaper than Nuclear. Bloomberg said that going by existing nuclear industries in western nations, the cost would be “at least four times greater than the average” for Australian wind and solar plants with storage today.
Furthermore, Australia has plenty of wind and solar resources with large areas of semi-vacant land, and lots of people vying to build wind or solar power. There appears, as yet, to be no one volunteering to build nuclear in Australia, certainly not seven power stations worth by 2035.
To repeat, SMRs do not exist commercially so we have no idea what they would cost, or how much energy they would produce. So it is pointless budgeting for them.
Australia’s coal fired power stations will largely be phased out by 2035. So, to avoid power supply shortfalls and high electricity bills between the gradual shutting down of coal energy and the beginning of nuclear, we have to increase renewables and energy storage. If we do not do this, then electricity prices will increase massively or emissions from Gas will increase.
Nuclear will also add significantly to the costs of energy. To pay off the huge capital investment, which it seems will be carried by taxpayers, prices will have to rise.
Conclusion
if the debate serves as a distraction from scaling-up policy support for renewable energy investment, it will sound the death knell for decarbonisation ambitions – the only reason for Australia to consider going nuclear in the first place.
Plus a few other references. If this summary contravenes copyright, please let me know….
Age
Ted O’Brien, the shadow energy minister, has said the nuclear plants built here will last for between 80 and 100 years.
This is clearly likely to be guesswork as there are no 100 year old plants anywhere in the world…. Nuclear power plants did not exist in 1924.
The mean age of the 416 active nuclear reactors is about 32 years. The average age of the 29 reactors that have shut over the past five years, is less than 43.
16 reactors have been operating for 51 or more years. Mycle Schneider, an independent analyst who coordinates the annual world nuclear industry status report says “There is zero experience of a 60-year-old operating reactor, zero. It never happened. Leave alone 80 years or beyond” (The world’s oldest, Switzerland’s Beznau, has clocked up 55 years with periods of outages.)
CSIRO’s report looked at a 30 to 40 year life for a large nuclear plant as there was “little evidence presented that private financing would be comfortable” with the risk for any longer.
As plants age, maintenance costs are likely to increase (physical entropy or wear), as they have in France. Apparently the US has avoided this problem, although with declining investment over the last decade the average reactor age has increased from 32 to 42 years. So we need to find out how that was done.
What is the state of the global nuclear industry?
Five nuclear reactors opened last year and five were shut down
Over the last 20 years 102 reactors opened and 104 shut down
China has added 49 during that period and closed none. Nuclear energy provides about 5% of China’s electricity, which seems to be slightly more than the Coalition is going for in Australia
Last year, China added 1GW of nuclear energy but more than 200GW of solar.
In the world, solar passed nuclear for total energy production in 2022 while wind overtook it a decade ago.
Schneider says “In industrial terms, nuclear power is irrelevant in the overall global market for electricity generating technology.”
Bill Gates’ company has been trying to build commercial SMR’s for 18 years and not succeeded yet.
The CSIRO Gencost report noted that the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems SMR, was cancelled last November. In 2020 its estimated cost of of $18,200/kiloWatt, was more than double that of large-scale plants at $8,655/kW (in 2023 dollars). But by “late 2022 UAMPS updated their capital cost to $28,580/kW” the CSIRO said. “The UAMPS estimate implies nuclear SMR has been hit by a 57% cost increase which is much larger than the average 20% observed in other technologies.”
Nuscale, the only company to have received design approval from US regulators for an SMR, were building SMRs for US Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory. NuScale announced at the start of 2023 that the target cost of power for this project had increased by 53% since 2021 to US$89/ MWh. they had, in one account failed to attract customers at these prices.
Big Economies and Nuclear
The Coalition says that Australia is the only one of the top 20 economies that doesn’t have or isn’t getting nuclear energy. However, Germany has abandoned nukes as is well known, and Germany is also using less coal power than it has in decades. Italy shut down reactors after 1990. Saudi Arabia has been considering developing nuclear for about 15 years but, still has not embarked on it, and has set a goal of 50% of electricity coming from solar by 2030.
The 35 construction starts since 2019 were either in China, or were Russian-built in various nations. It is unlikely the Coalition will go to China or Russia for builders.
France?
Nuclear provides almost two-thirds (62%) of France’s electricity. However, the French company EDF has €54.5bn debt and hasn’t finished a plant since 2007.
EDF is building Hinkley Point C in the UK, which has suffered from cost blowouts and delays. The current estimate is that it may not start until 2031 and may cost $90bn to complete. High electricity prices have been promised to keep it solvent.
In 2014, the Government aimed to reduce nuclear’s share of electricity generation to 50% by 2025. This target was delayed in 2019 to 2035, before being abandoned in 2023. Apparently 1 reactor is currently under construction. The amount of energy produced in 2022-3 declined due to necessary repairs [1] and in 2016 all the reactors were offline due to a long-term coverup of manufacturing faults. By the end of April 2022 it was reported that 28 of France’s 56 nuclear reactors were offline
US?
The 4.5GW Vogtle plant reached full capacity in April, making it the US’s largest nuclear power station. Its first two units exceeded $US35bn, with the state of Georgia’s Public Service Commission saying cost increases and delays have “completely eliminated any benefit on a lifecycle costs basis”.
The Korean company Kepco built the 5.6GW Barakah plant in the United Arab Emirates. As Schneider’s report notes, the UAE “did not agree” to the disclosure of cost, delays or impairment losses. so we have no knowledge of the problems, cost overruns etc…..
1) There is no costing at all, except for claiming it is cheaper than Labor’s renewable plan. The CSIRO’s costing are just officially denied. We have no idea of the cost and are not promised a costing.
2) The costs and time frames of nuclear energy production, are notoriously under-estimated even by experienced builders. Australia has never built a nuclear power station, and we are now to build 7 of them (simultaneously?), so we can assume any estimate is an under-estimate.
3) Given that no Australian company will be able to build them, then most of the money for building and supplies will go overseas.
4) The plans seems completely inadequate. The energy generated by seven nukes will not replace the energy from the coal fired power stations that are closing down. On top of that, they clearly cannot supply the extra energy the country may require.
5) Commercially available SMRs are currently hopeful fictions. They may produce about a third of the energy of standard nuclear energy stations. We have no idea what they will cost to build.
6) Dutton apparently thinks a drawing of a building is the same as a ‘concept design’, so his pronouncements that SMRs are viable are hopeful fantasies.
7) The Dutton plan does not care about emissions reduction, and the only reason for altering the energy system is because of the need to reduce emissions. If a plan does not reduce emissions significantly it is a waste of money.
8) There are no plans to reduce emissions from transport or farming.
9) The Dutton plan also seems to involve the suppression of large scale renewables.
10) This suppression plus the inadequacy of the number of reactors, pretty much guarantees that methane burning, and its emissions, will increase to provide the necessary energy.
11) Dutton will scrap the 2030 emissions reduction targets, breaking his own government’s previous agreements at the Paris COP. This, again, illustrates the plan’s lack of concern about emissions reduction. Supposedly net zero will occur after the reactors are built, even though the reactors do not provide significant reduction, gas burning will increase emissions, and other sources of reduction are not being mentioned.
12) Hence it seems plausible to assume that the idea has nothing to do with emissions reduction, other than to distract from it. Therefore it is a complete waste of money, no matter how cheap it is.
13) The Dutton plan for people’s resistance to nuclear is simply to ignore it and suppress it by force or bribery of particular people. However, the Coalition encourages opposition to renewables.
14) There is no comprehensive plan for waste disposal. We can worry about that later.
15) There is no evidence that the proposed sites have enough water for cooling, or that the local environment can handle the heating from taking waste heat.
16) Taxpayers will be responsible for the entire life-time costs of the reactors. It is not clear whether tax payers will get all the profits. Renewable energy is largely financed by the private sector.
17) The economic benefits are asserted rather than proven and would apply to renewables all over the country as well.
18) The Nuclear plan is unlikely to reduce the cost of electricity at all. It will most likely it will boost the price, by stopping the expansion of cheaper low emissions sources, and being inadequate to what is required.
19) Again the nuclear plan will not set Australia on course for net-zero by 2050, or even reduce emissions in any real sense.
It is a complete waste of money and effort, for no obvious benefit.
See the two previous posts on the Australian Coalition’s nuclear energy policy for documentation
The quick summary is that the Coalition’s nuclear plan will not significantly add to energy availability or emissions reduction in Australia. It will, however, cost a lot.
Peter Dutton, the leader of the Australian Opposition, has declared that he has released the policy which will make Australia Nuclear if the Coalition get into government.
The first thing to note is that his policy release is completely uncosted, despite the main scientific organisation in Australia, saying that nuclear would be at least 50% more expensive than solar and wind and would not be available any sooner than 2040, and previous attacks on CSIRO estimates by the Coalition, with the CSIRO denying those attacks had any validity. Oddly perhaps if Labor released uncosted policies that simply ignored the costings by the CSIRO, then the Coalition and Murdoch media would be jumping up and down in dismay, shouting about irresponsibility. But not now.
Some costs for the newest design large scale reactors:
Construction cost experience with generation 3 nuclear projects in US and Europe
AGL Energy’s CEO Damien Nicks said “There is no viable schedule for the regulation or development of nuclear energy in Australia, and the cost, build time and public opinion are all prohibitive…. Policy certainty is important for companies like AGL and ongoing debate on the matter runs the risk of unnecessarily complicating the long-term investment decisions necessary for the energy transition.””
Andrew Forrest, says “I simply want to see fossil fuels removed from Australia’s energy mix as soon as possible, but as an industrialist, I’ve looked at nuclear and it does not stack up,”
Kyle Mangini, of IMF investments, said it was “virtually impossible” for the private sector to take on the financial risk of building nuclear reactors without taxpayer subsidies. “If you look at where the nuclear facilities are being built globally, they’re almost in all cases being built by governments,” adding “”In Australia, there’s never been a nuclear facility built, so there’s no skilled labour force.”
As we proceed it will become reasonable to suspect that the main aim of the plan is to stop renewables, and keep the fossil fuels burning. The leader of the National party David Littleproud.. [said]
“We want to send the investment signals that there is a cap on where [the Coalition] will go with renewables and where we will put them…. Earlier on Monday [he] told ABC radio the Coalition’s energy policy will show investors Australia doesn’t need “large-scale industrial windfarms, whether they be offshore or onshore”.
As well the Coalition will drop all 2030 targets, and so encourage the build up of emissions, even if they make the 2050 target. The whole point of the change in energy is to reduce GHG emissions. It is doubtful whether this proposed change will do much if anything to reduce those emissions, and emissions reduction is urgent. Over the last year, much to many scientists surprise the average temperature has crossed 1.5 degrees C, reaching 1.63 degrees C. It is likely to cross 2 degrees relatively soon, and then spiral out of control. Innes Willox, chief executive of national employer association Ai Group summarises the policy, by saying:
“With no delivery projected until the middle of the next decade, the proposal does not immediately help with short-term emissions reduction or the cost and reliability of energy in the short term.”
While it maybe true that the reactors are cheaper than Labor’s Plan…. are they a useful source of power and emissions reduction? If they are not, then it is money and time wasted.
The Press Release and after
The Priority is not climate change
The official press release of the policy opens by making it clear the priority is not dealing with climate change
Every Australian deserves and should expect access to cheaper, cleaner and consistent electricity…
Right now, in households and businesses around the country, Labor’s expensive renewables-only approach is failing.
In a classic move, the reason for changing energy systems has been ignored. However, they do recognise one problem with the energy system
90 per cent of baseload electricity, predominantly coal fired power stations, is coming to the end of life over the next decade…
a future Federal Coalition Government will introduce zero-emissions nuclear energy in Australia, which has proven to get electricity prices and emissions down all over the world
Nuclear certainly has not reduced electricity prices everywhere in the world. The unfinished Hinkley Point being an obvious example. However, the propaganda aim seems to be to associate cost of living increases with the current government, imagined cutbacks in fossil fuels, and the rollout of renewables, which is a tactic borrowed from either Trump or his corporate think-tanks. There is no consideration of the inflationary effects of fossil fuel company profiteering, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and hence more competition for gas, or even the local break down of old coal mines and power stations.
Locations
The proposed locations are:
Liddell Power Station, New South Wales
Mount Piper Power Station, New South Wales
Loy Yang Power Stations, Victoria
Tarong Power Station, Queensland
Callide Power Station, Queensland
Northern Power Station, South Australia (SMR only)
Muja Power Station, Western Australia (SMR only)
SMRs do not exist commercially yet.
It appears likely these sites were chosen because they have cabling infrastructure (grid) already in place. Others state:
Some of the sites, particularly Loy Yang in the Latrobe Valley, are very close to earthquake fault lines. Several have no obvious water source, which is essential. They appear to have been chosen for political saleability, not science.
A later comment from Ted O’Brien implies that the Coalition have not even decided the number of reactors involved
Ted O’Brien, who designed the plan, told the ABC’s Insiders the amount of energy generated would depend on the type and number of reactors built at each site, and that neither of those things could be known until a Coalition government could establish a nuclear expert agency to undertake studies.
Rather optimistically Dutton claims the sites “will start producing electricity by 2035 (with small modular reactors) or 2037 (if modern larger plants are found to be the best option).” Again this is with currently non commercially available SMRs, plus clearing all the political and economic barriers which are discussed below. Loy yang one of the sites is not closing until 2034 at the moment, so building could not start until after then. Again the CSIRO estimated the earliest anything could be running would be 2040 given a 12-15 year build.
The latest AEMO integrated system plan “forecasts the retirement of 90% of Australia’s remaining 21 gigawatts of coal generation by 2034-35, with the entire fleet retired by 2038.” To overcome that issue requires plenty of gas backup, or lots of renewables and storage. The Coalition is not saying how much energy they hope their nukes will generate or how they plan to make up the gap, but given the announced hostility to renewables, the plan most likely depends on gas as a major source and not a backup. Ted O’Brien said the obvious solution to the collapse of Coal was to “pour more gas into the market” but also said he would “welcome all renewables”. So their plan is to increase emissions, and it seems obvious that parts of the Coalition do not want more renewables, and more renewables is not part of the plan
AEMO is worried that renewables are not being rolled out fast enough to fill in the gaps in 2024-5, and nuclear cannot be ready in that time. It will be interesting to see what happens there. The climate council says:
Seven standard nuclear reactors would deliver approximately nine gigawatts of energy capacity [possibly more than that depending on design and what you are counting]. While [AEMO claims] Australia will need at least 300 gigawatts by 2050
We apparently use 22 GW of coal at present, so the planned nukes are unlikely to even replace coal use now, never mind the energy from other sources.
O’Brien strangely argued that “Australia already is a nuclear nation. We know that nuclear technology saves lives, we know that because we have a nuclear reactor operating here in Sydney. It’s been operating for decades, saving lives, especially diagnosing and treating cancers.” However, there is a massive difference between the size and complexity of Lucas Heights and that of a nuclear power station
“It must be recognised that this is a ‘zero-power’ pool reactor where the complexities of high pressure, high power, high radiation environments do not exist.”
People who moved into the reactor’s area, already knowing it was there, have objected to its presence for a long time. Even a small reactor is not accepted by everyone.
The big question, however, is what level of energy will these 7 reactors provide? And the answer appears to be “completely inadequate.”
Ownership, Funding and Control?
In a later interview/speech Dutton said:
The assets will be owned by the Commonwealth – a very important point – and we’ll work with experts to deliver these programmes…… [and] The Australian Government will own these assets, but form partnerships with experienced nuclear companies to build and operate them.
So taxpayers will be funding the building, and probably covering decommissioning and insurance. This will be expensive, and how will it be paid for? By increasing taxes, increasing the deficit, decreasing Medibank or social security, or getting huge loans? Hopefully the reactors will not be given to the private sector after the taxpayers have funded them, although the second statement implies they may be run privately, but we have no idea who will be involved. The main builders currently in operation are Russian and Chinese, who we might assume would not be acceptable.
On the other hand Renewables are under private, community or household funding and control, which is usually said to be a good thing.
We also need to remember that nuclear is potentially dangerous and we need heaps of trained and experienced people, and good regulation for Australian circumstances, to keep it safe and to cover fuel handling at all stages.
Supposed Economic Benefits
The sales pitch is that:
Not only will local communities benefit from high paying, multi-generational jobs but communities will be empowered to maximise the benefits from hosting an asset of national importance by way of:
A multi-billion dollar facility guaranteeing high-paying jobs for generations to come;
An integrated economic development zone to attract manufacturing, value-add and high-tech industry; and
A regional deal unlocking investment in modern infrastructure, services and community priorities. Press release
The leader of the Nationals promoted the idea that this plan would be beneficial for rural economies. Apparently locally owned and controlled renewables are not. Susan Ley again emphasised the economic side saying “So, our vision is to make sure that we underpin our economic success with jobs for decades to come in industries where Australia has that competitive advantage.” She did not say what the advantage would be. Ted O’Brien said “Labor is turning the lights out. Prices will soar, jobs will be shed and industries will collapse. Australians will be left poorer and our nation weaker.” LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION – TRANSCRIPT – JOINT PRESS CONFERENCE WITH THE HON DAVID LITTLEPROUD MP, THE HON SUSSAN LEY MP, THE HON ANGUS TAYLOR MP AND MR TED O’BRIEN MP, SYDNEY
However:
A 2023 PricewaterhouseCoopers report into offshore wind found the energy source was expected to add $40bn to GDP between 2027 and 2040, supporting 19,000 jobs in the peak of construction and 7000 to 14,000 operational roles in regional areas. According to International Energy Agency estimates, 17.5 gigawatts of offshore wind will be added to global capacity in 2024 compared with around 8.5GW of gross nuclear capacity
Coalition at odds on energy strategy. The Australian 19 June 2024: 4
Part of the promotion is that renewables are a “wrecking ball through the Australian economy” and that families “know it because it’s harder in their own budgets”, Again the plan is to associate the current multi-causal world wide inflation with Labor’s renewables’ policy. However,
Dr Dylan McConnell, an energy systems analyst at the University of New South Wales, says only about $100 of a household’s annual electricity bill is made up of charges related to environmental programs, such as feed-in-tariffs for rooftop solar or financial incentives for large-scale renewables projects.
[and] In the last quarter, the biggest price rises were in rents, secondary education, tertiary education and medical and hospital services… insurance premiums have gone up 16.4% in the last year… ABS data also shows electricity prices are a small part of Australian household expenditure, at just 2.36% of overall costs.
And the Coalition’s programme not only seems to include 7 expensive reactors, but to need back up in terms of more coal or gas because those reactors will not replace lost coal generation and will not make up for lost renewables. All of this will put more financial strain on taxpayers and customers as they cost more than renewables as will be discussed in the next section. The price is usually set in Australia by the most costly source, so relying more on gas than on renewables, will boost electricity prices. At the best, the prosed nuclear sites will do nothing to reduce the current increase in prices as they won’t exist for some while. So the Coalition’s implied end of rising electricity prices is false.
Problems
An ex-Prime Minister writes:
A nuclear power plant would face the same economic challenges that coal-fired generators do now – for much of the day it would be unable to compete with solar and wind. During those times of excess supply the nuclear plant would add to the excess. That surplus electricity would be taken up by batteries and pumped hydro which would then compete with the nuclear plant during the night.
So the only way the economics of a nuclear plant could be assured in our market would be for the rollout of solar and wind to be constrained. That seems to be Dutton’s intention
So unless renewables are destroyed nuclear may not be profitable.
The Coalition’s lack of costing is obvious, except to insist seven nuclear stations are cheaper than near 100% renewables. However, in one interview the leader of the Nationals was asked how much the plan will cost and whether it was around the CSIRO’s $8.5 billion to $17 billion estimate. He replied “Yeah, look, we’re not disputing that,” (Nationals leader pressed on how much nuclear will cost Aussies).
The lack of costing also does not include the cost of climate disruptions, fires, floods, droughts, heat deaths etc. They also say that “the investment that we’re making, it’s over an 80 year period” which might imply that they are going to build these 7 reactors very slowly. We don’t know as there is no timeline for the building. We have no estimation of the cost of electricity produced by nuclear power despite the CSIRO estimating it would be over 50% more than renewable energy. We don’t know what reactor types are involved, including the experimental SMRs, we don’t know about waste disposal (waste will be kept on site until it isn’t), we have no plans for emissions reduction in the rest of the economy (so talking of 2050 net zero is fantasy). We don’t know who are the likely builders and it is foolish to expect that nuclear energy can be built by Australian companies so campaigning for nuclear energy is campaigning to export billions of Australian money overseas. And, as argued above, nuclear as proposed by the Coalition will only partially replace current coal power. It will not supply the new energy Australia needs. There is a massive gap which we can presume will require more fossil fuels to fill.
in March 2023 Dutton said:
I don’t support the establishment of big nuclear facilities here at all, I’m opposed to it, but for the small modular reactors, we can have them essentially replacing brownfield sites now, so you can turn coal off and put the small modular reactors in and it’s essentially a plug and play. You can use the existing distribution networks
But that was a year ago…. and he may have realised that SMRs are largely fiction and not high energy sources able to replace coal power. An SMR is expected to produce 300 Megawatt electric (MWe) producing 7.2 million kWh per day, less than a third of a large scale reactor at 1,000 MWe producing 24 million kWh per day. So if we don’t go with 5 normal reactors we would have to have over 15 SMRs to replace them. In any case the 5 large scale rectors and 2 SMRs would, according to Simon Holmes a Court, “be expected to generate 50 TWh a year – less than 15% of the new generation needed”.
I have encountered arguments which suggest that submarines have SMR’s. However we have had nuclear submarines since 1958, so we have had them for at least 60 years. No one, not even the military, has appeared to successfully use them on land, and this is despite various militaries having had no problem using long term poisons and mutagens, even when their own troops could not be protected. Whatever, the reason it has not discouraged large scale nuclear building, so there is no reason to think the conversion would be easy or even plausible.
While the Coalition encourages local communities to oppose renewable energy, it appears they may not tolerate opposition to gas, oil or nuclear. The Deputy leader of the Nationals stated “if a community is absolutely adamant then we will not proceed but we will not be looking beyond these seven sites,” to which David Littleproud (the leader) said:
“No, she is not correct,… We made this very clear. Peter Dutton and David Littleproud as part of a Coalition government is prepared to make the tough decisions in the national interest.
To be confusing he also talked about “proper consultation.” In 2019 Ted Obrien in an official Coalition Government media release said:
“Australia should say a definite ‘No’ to old nuclear technologies but a conditional ‘Yes’ to new and emerging technologies such as small modular reactors.
“And most importantly,” said Mr O’Brien “the Australian people should be at the centre of any approval process”
I presume they are intending a neoliberal consultation in which people are told what is happening and ignored, and local businesses bribed. They would also have to deal with the issue that property values would likely decline near the site, although that can be dealt with by telling people that it is their problem.
Importantly there is Federal legislation forbidding nuclear power. Its not clear how changes to that legislation would pass through the Senate. Various states also have legislation (nuclear power is banned in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland), and even the Coalition at state level is not welcoming the project. According to The Australian, Queensland LNP leader David Crisafulli has ruled out lifting the state’s nuclear ban if he wins the Queensland election in October (Coalition at odds on energy strategy. 19 June 2024: 4). The main plan to overcome the problem seems to be bribery (“Somebody famously said ‘I would not stand between the premier and a bucket of money’,”). However Dutton has implied several times that consultation could just involve the Commonwealth overruling the States, again an authoritarian neoliberal consultation process.
However, it is perhaps not surprising that the Minerals Council of Australia (the mining company Union) is in favour of nuclear but wants the ‘free market’ to sort it out, which effectively opposes the idea of government ownership (Tania Constable, End the ban on nuclear energy, and let the marketplace sort it out. The Australian 19 June 2024: 20). So they don’t have complete support from the plan there.
Apparently:
The United Arab Emirates is often put forward of an example Australia could follow. It took just 13 years to connect its first nuclear power plant, and is the only country in the world that has managed to successfully build nuclear from scratch in the last 30 years.
It is obviously not easy to do and that is 13 years after clearing all the political hurdles in Australia, If the Coalition gets in in 2025, and we assume 1 year to get the politics, money, ‘consultation,’ site acquisition, choosing builders and training workers out of the way, and start building, then it would be absolute best practice to have it running by 2039 – somewhat more in keeping the the CSIRO’s predictions that the Dutton predictions. However, Ted O’Brien and David Littleproud are now flagging that there might be two and a half years of local community consultation before the site details were finalised, although communities could not veto the sites. So that adds another year to year and a half to readiness times, making the best practice date 2040, not 2035-37 as promised.
The level of Coalition competence on design is also not impressive. Peter Dutton tweeted that:
“This [image] is the concept design of a zero emissions small modular reactor [SMR].”
This seems frighteningly naïve when it comes to any complex and potentially deadly technology.
That picture is not a concept design for an SMR, it is just a design for a building and setting, which might hold an SMR, a library, a country restaurant, or a cheese display.
A concept design would tell us something about how the SMR is supposed to work, what the materials it will be constructed out of are, what the cooling system is, what the safety system is, where the uranium and waste is stored etc…. You may note that this ‘concept design’ does not even have a fence, it is that insecure and open to terrorist attacks…. this is an empty fantasy drawing, not a design of any practical value.
Foreign Policy
It may now happen that our neighbours think we are going to acquire nuclear weaponry, a normal product of nuclear power, and make moves to defend themselves. This is not fiction. When the Coalition decided to buy nuclear submarines from the US
the US made it plain to senior members of the Morrison government that if there was any suggestion the submarine deal could precipitate any broader policy change in Australia – anything at all that could generate speculation about acquiring nuclear weapons, no matter how fanciful – the deal was off. It must not, under any circumstances, give rise to any extraneous suggestion that the US was bending non-proliferation rules.
That included any talk of establishing a civil nuclear industry.
So they broke their agreement and are now using the argument that nuclear powered submarines are safe, to imply nuclear energy is always safe.
Nuclear vs Renewables.
Apart from over-optimism, and abandonment of emissions reduction, the problems for nuclear and renewables come down to:
Which technology reduces emissions with most speed
How much energy do we need? Can either supply that amounts
Which is most cost effective
Can an economy run on renewables
Which produces less long term environmental problems
What kind of social organisation is required for either of them
Going backwards
6) Renewables will be obstructed by fossil fuel companies for several reasons; the first is the obvious that renewables almost immediately start reducing emissions and the need to make emissions, and potentially cause loss of profit for fossil fuel companies and leave investments in fossil fuels stranded, as they replace fossil fuels. In this policy, it seems that Nuclear as planned does not reduce emissions; it may increase them as gas is used for backup with inadequate power generation. Renewables also allow the slow and modular building of Community controlled energy supplies, local level energy, resilience if they can function when the grid is down, and give the community political power and local finance, as money does not leave the local area. Renewables can be used to encourage independence, local political engagement and choice. Nuclear does not, it remains under outside control. Given the Coalition’s apparent hostility to renewables, the aim seems to be to keep centralised control, fossil fuel company profits and corporate power rather than to solve the emissions problem. In fact there is no real sense from the nuclear position that pollution and emissions are a problem. So it may be that neoliberal corporate dominance is one of many systems incompatible with solving the challenge of climate change, and hence needs to be curtailed.
5) Both nuclear and renewables disrupt environments. Renewables can be built so that farming can continue. Wind farms can also be built offshore and are likely to acts as artificial reefs and attract marine life to boost fishing and tourism. With proper design renewables should create little non-recyclable waste, but that does require the right designs. Nuclear requires ongoing costs of fuel and damage from mining, transport of radioactive supplies and waste, often through residential areas. Waste needs safe storage, and nuclear involves very expensive decommissioning at the end of its life because of high risk to those cleaning up and the local environment. Nuclear portends continued threats to environments.
4) It is possible that a modern corporate economy cannot run on renewables, but then a modern corporate economy cannot run on only 7 nukes. A modern corporate economy cannot run with climate change worsening either. Renewables are expandable, so they might be able to deal with the energy requirements. We might just have to change the economy and lower energy requirements, but that will involve a lot of struggle.
3) The CSIRO is clear on cost. Renewables are far more cost effective than nuclear. Nuclear cost blowouts are apparently worse than cost blowouts for the Olympics. Renewables are cheaper to install even including storage and cables. If well designed they should allow farming. I would rather trust the CSIRO’s estimates than those of a politician who is not itemizing the costs, and may never itemize them. As a further statement, Tim Buckley, director of thinktank Climate Energy Finance says:
“The international experience shows that the western nuclear industry is plagued with massive delays and cost blowouts,”… noting the Vogtle nuclear power plant expansion in the US blew out to cost $35bn, while Britain’s Hinkley Point C plant has been delayed to 2031 and is on track to cost £33bn pounds ($63bn).
2) The question of the energy we need is hard to answer, because this changes all the time. If we have to change the economy, then we change the energy we need. Earlier I mentioned that coal is fading out, and we may need 300GW in the 2030s. This energy cannot be delivered by 7 nukes. It might be that the ideal solution is to develop both nuclear and renewables, but it seems clear that the Coalition does not want to do this, they want to restrict renewables and support gas as with their technology neutral gas led recovery from Covid. Again we may need to change the economy to survive.
1) Either technology could reduce emissions, if the policy and the technology is well designed and implemented. Again the problem seems to be that with only 7 nukes the Coalition’s policy is not designed to reduce emissions. It seems to be designed to generate more gas use at great expense to taxpayers. So the chance of using nuclear and renewables together has been abandoned.
The Conspiracy?
The Dutton nuclear plan
bear a striking resemblance to a policy Trevor St Baker and SMR Nuclear Technology have been advocating for several years, in evidence and submissions to federal and state parliamentary committees, in think tanks and in energy forums.
[St Baker is a patron of the extremely wealthy] Coalition for Conservation, One of its aims is to reach out to environmentalists, renewable energy experts and climate scientists to garner support for Coalition members
I’m not absolutely against nuclear energy, it could be really useful, but I am against nuclear energy when its being used as:
a) a distraction from reducing emissions;
b) in support of continued fossil fuel burning and;
c) to disrupt the replacement of fossil fuels by renewables.
All of these factors seem to be features of Dutton’s policy. The policy will not produce enough energy to make a difference to emissions. It will at best, and probably not at all, generate enough energy to replace some of the phased out coal. We probably need to build at least 40 full scale nukes with continuing expansion of renewables to make a difference; with no sign of that level of build out and the suppression of large scale renewables, the only way to give Australia the energy it wants is through more gas burning. There seems to be no guarantee that the plans can get through the various governmental oppositions. There is no evidence to suggest that it is really intended to. Chucking out the 2030 targets because they are too difficult, suggests that the 2050 targets will become too difficult too, which is great for fossil fuel companies. If the Coalition wanted nuclear to be successful they should have started about 20 years ago.
However, while some people say the deception is easily seen through, Dutton’s choice is not a death wish. He will get funding from mining and fossil fuel companies, he will get corporate and pro-Trump think tanks churning out material to justify him and clog social media. He will get support from Murdoch and probably most of the rest of the media. He will get unity in his Party, and he may even get some Russian and Chinese support through social media.
But then, taking a cue from the Anti-Voice campaign, which is much more appropriate for this policy at the moment….. Peter Dutton wrote:
“In refusing to provide basic information and answer reasonable questions on the Voice, you are treating the Australian people like mugs… your approach will ensure a dangerous and divisive debate grounded in hearsay and misinformation.”
For non-Australians, Peter Dutton is the leader of the opposition right wing party.
Whether you think Dutton is a bad thing is of course a matter of opinion.
Some people apparently think protecting fossil fuel company sales and profits is good, because they are the people who built the modern world and we should continue down that path.
Some people think climate change does not matter because a socialist conspiracy of scientists all over the world is far more probable than a conspiracy of right wing politicians, and corporations who are profiting, to deny climate change.
Some people think that not acting is a really bad choice that will kill Australians and lead to more floods, fires and droughts.
Some people think it is a really bad choice that will kill Australians and lead to more floods, fires and droughts, so we need the money from gas and coal exports….
Peter Dutton does not want fossil fuel energy to be replaced with renewable energy. As a result he has has claimed the 2030 Labor Party emissions targets are difficult and so are unobtainable, and they are bad for the economy, so he won’t bother to have any emissions reduction targets, or at least won’t bother to announce them before the next election. This protects fossil fuel emissions, and so he seems to be serious about protecting fossil fuel company profits.
In the old days would ‘Conservatives’ have shrunk from a problem because it was difficult?
His respect for the corporate economy seems much greater than his respect for human lives and the property of ordinary people. He seems to expect that it will be possible to attain the cutbacks by 2050, but of course with enough delay from not having any targets now those later targets probably won’t happen because they have also become way too difficult.
That is why he is proposing nuclear energy, which the CSIRO has said will be far more expensive than renewables plus all their oncosts of storage, cabling etc. At the best nuclear won’t be ready to run in Australia until 2040, which means at least another 16 years of fossil fuel profits. He almost certainly knows nuclear energy will not really get going, so as to replace all fossil fuels, for another 20 years after that, even if he wanted to. The problems of building the necessary 20 to 50 nuclear power stations at the same time in the one country nowadays are severe or possibly insurmountable, so it won’t happen. [We now know that they have no intention of replacing all fossil fuel generate energy with nuclear] Nuclear power also has huge costs for decommissioning, and for insurance (if you can get any). Taxpayers should not have to pay this or the billions in costs to build.
Nuclear energy also involves water for cooling so, in Australia, this probably means seaside plants only, as the rivers are already drying up. Nukes in France were shut down a year or so ago because of lack of water.
From a reducing climate turmoil point of view, Labor’s targets are inadequate as well, but far less inadequate than Dutton’s.
Dutton is also running around the country campaigning against windfarms at sea (10 or more Km away from habited zones), supposedly for both ecological and consulting with community reasons. Likewise National Party leader David Littleproud spent a day meeting with fishing and anti-wind farm groups opposed to plans for up to 200 floating turbines offshore between Wombarra and Kiama and said the Coalition was committed to overturning the two offshore wind zones now declared for the Illawarra and Port Stephens in the NSW Hunter.
“We should have a slow transition from some of our coal-fired power stations to nuclear power plants that are zero emissions and firm that up with gas and carbon capture storage, which is zero emissions as well,”
However the Coalition have never opposed offshore drilling despite it producing continual noise at depth, and being notably damaging to marine life. I’m also prepared to bet that he won’t go on endlessly about community consultation for nuke installation, if he is serious about it [again this does seem to be correct]. People will just have cop it, especially in Labor electorates, or it will not go ahead and fossil fuel company profits are guaranteed for even longer. which in his eyes seems good.
The latest move the US elites through the Atlas network, corporate bought think-tanks and Murdoch media, in their fight to preserve oil company profits, is not to focus entirely on denial of climate change or scientific conspiracy, as they are perhaps getting a little unpersuasive, but to try and get people worked up about industrial size renewables and their possible local ecological destructiveness. They do not seem to promote objection to industrial coal, gas or even diesel energy and mines, despite their documented detrimental ecological and health effects, especially when at sea, and so it seems less well organised.
There is some evidence to suggest that money is also following this trail from the USA to Australia, along with faked academic papers [2], and other fake news [3], [4], and ‘community resistance’ which has in some places been purchasing support. These activists also make sure not to ever mention the possibility of community led renewable energy – because it is (by definition) not corporate, and they do not bother to compare known effects of climate change with less likely effects of offshore wind warms.
Peter Dutton may well be following his American sponsors. He is probably also betting that Trump will win the next US Presidential election (which seems likely), and that result will be unrestrained action for oil companies and polluters (“Drill, baby, drill.”). Dutton, wants to support his American allies, because he wants to be on the winning side.
Whatever his policies are, Dutton’s choice is not a death wish as some have alleged. He will get funding from mining and fossil fuel companies, he will get corporate and pro-Trump think tanks churning out material to justify him, pay his supporters, and clog social media. He will get support from Murdoch and most of the rest of the media. He will get unity in his Party (who seem to be largely climate deniers), and the whole fossil fuel and corporate ‘Deep State’ will be behind him. He is obviously courting Gina Rinehart [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]. He may even get some Russian support through social media, as Putin is keen to continue to sell fossil fuels, and may logically think climate change will make Russia more habitable and gain northern ports.
In terms of gaining victory Dutton is not making a foolish choice, in terms of looking after Australia, its people, wildlife and future, he is.
Even the inadequate Labor Party actions will not be allowed to continue if he wins.
As a neoliberal, Trump gets really upset about climate change being used ‘politically’ to encourage energy transition, cut back the burning of fossil fuels, helping electric cars or promoting corporate responsibility. The only responsibility that Corporations have is to make money, and that can never destroy their ability to survive.
To Recap: Agenda 47 gives Trump’s official policies, many of which are also present in the corporate manifesto Project 2025. They seem to be heavily oriented towards crushing dissent.
This section considers his ecological and climate attitudes.
Against Corporate Responsibility and Shareholder action
He makes it clear by his non-political support of free speech that it should be forbidden for shareholders to ask companies not to destroy the environment. The sole moral responsibility of companies is to make profit. That’s all; not to be safe for workers, not protect the communities they operate in, not consider the effects of their actions on others, or whatever, just make profit.
When President Trump returns to the White House, he will immediately ban ESG [Environmental, social, and governance] investments through executive order and work with Congress to enact a permanent ban.
“When I’m back in the White House, I will sign an executive order and, with Congress’ support, a law to keep politics away from America’s retirement accounts forever.”
The entire ESG scheme is designed to funnel your retirement money to the maniacs on the radical left.
But pensions and retirement accounts with his radicalism and incompetence, they’re going down and they’re going down big and nobody’s seen anything like it.
I will demand that funds invest your money to help you, not them, but to help you. Not to help the radical left communists, because that’s exactly what they are. I will once again protect our seniors, just like I did before, from the woke left and the woke left is bad news. They destroy countries.
ESG simply means asking companies not to destroy the environment that people (including old people) live in, to pay fair wages, not defraud people, adhere to labour laws, factor in the risks of their actions and be transparent and responsible. However, this will be prevented.
Under Trumps laws, no one, including shareholders will be able to ask companies to stop destroying things or poisoning people, apparently because not destroying things and not exploiting workers, is a radical leftism which destroys countries. It should also be remembered that shareholders are company owners, and that if they cannot influence what their companies do, other than support them going for more profit, then that is a fairly odd definition of capitalist property rights.
It seems that, for Trump, it is disloyal to America to challenge corporate power, while siding with corporate power is completely non-political. All those who disagree are “radical left communists, because that’s exactly what they are.” Asking companies to disclose climate risks is also criminal.
Against Recognising Corporate Climate Risk
In May 2021, Biden issued an Executive Order that required federal agencies to define “climate-related financial risk to the financial stability of the… U.S. financial system” which led the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to require private companies to publicly disclose climate-related risks.
This ruling will force companies to share with investors their estimated impact on the environment, which will allow climate crusaders in investment firms to punish companies that do not conform to their radical environmental agenda.
Apparently looking at climate related risk is too big a risk for corporate liberty to pollute and harm people, to be requested.
More Fossil Fuels
Given Trump being against people acting within the normal rules of capitalism, and effectively putting an end to shareholder motions requesting responsibility, it is not surprising that his energy policy is more fossil fuels, despite the warnings about what this will produce.
He states:
“Joe Biden’s war on American energy is one of the key drivers of the worst inflation in 58 years, and it’s hitting every single American family very, very hard… Biden reversed every action I took that achieved energy independence and soon we were going to be energy dominant all over the world.”
Let us ignore that Biden has pushed for the greatest expansion of American fossil fuel production ever, and presided over huge increases in profits for oil companies [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]: that is not enough for Trump.
Nobody has more liquid gold under their feet than the United States of America. And we will use it and profit by it and live with it. And we will be rich again and we will be happy again. And we will be proud again. Thank you very much.
So lets burn more oil and make things harder for non-rich people by encouraging climate change.
On Day One, President Trump will rescind every one of Joe Biden’s industry-killing, jobs-killing, pro-China and anti-American electricity regulations.
China is being made into an enemy, and trying to go against Republican fossil fuel ideology is traitorous.
President Trump will DRILL, BABY, DRILL.
President Trump will remove all red tape that is leaving oil and natural gas projects stranded, including speeding up approval of natural gas pipelines into the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and New York.
Yes we don’t have to worry about whether going after shale oil and gas will damage people, water or whatever, we just have to support fossil fuels and the profits they generate. People who might think this is not automatically good, or who protest, will presumably be told they are not real Americans but woke Marxists, and removed.
Stopping Legal Protest
President Trump will stop the wave of frivolous litigation from environmental extremists that hold up critical energy development projects for years, increase project costs, and discourage future development.
It should not be a surprise to find out that people’s legal ability to protest and disagree with the demands of corporations is denounced as illegitimate and to be prevented. People should obey and curb their speech before their masters. They know nothing, and should have no power to disagree.
Against Climate Agreements and China
Biden is bad because:
he reentered the horrendous Paris Climate Accord, so unfair to the United States, good for other countries, so bad for us. He put up huge roadblocks to new oil, gas and coal production and much, much more…. The country that now benefits most from Joe Biden’s radical left Green New Deal is China.
President Trump will once again exit the horrendously unfair Paris Climate Accords and oppose all of the radical left’s Green New Deal policies that are designed to shut down the development of America’s abundant energy resources, which exceed any country’s in the world, including Russia and Saudi Arabia.
We know by now that we should not expect evidence, but the point seems to be that the current COP agreement involves possible cuts to fossil fuel production, and thus should be repudiated, no matter what the consequences. Corporate profit is the fundamentally important thing. Oddly he uses a justice argument to excuse this, the agreement is unfair…. Fairness presumably means powerful people and countries should do what they like. I guess that by attacking the ‘green new deal’ he is objecting to providing jobs by helping the energy transition. Fossil fuels have to remain the main source of US energy.
As you know, China paid hundreds of billions of dollars to the United States when I was president.
I presume this means the tariffs on Chinese goods, which Americans paid, not the Chinese. It is possible that China lost some deals, but they did not directly pay any money to the US because of the tariffs. We might hope a President would realise this, so I suspect the idea he is referring to tariffs is wrong.
Against EVs
Trump is opposed to electric cars, and people making a choice.
Because EVs cost an average of TWICE as much as gas-powered vehicles, take longer to fully charge, and have shorter ranges, almost two-thirds of Americans prefer their next car purchase to be a gas-powered vehicle, nearly half of all car dealerships would never sell an EV, and about half of current EV owners plan to switch back to a gas-powered car.
This is probably one reason why Elon Musk is attempting to cozy up to Trump. He realises that if Biden wins, he will be no worse off, but if Trump wins, EVs might be banned or taxed or put out of action, to protect fossil fuels.
Carbon Capture and Storage
Trump does make a few sensible statements.
According to two 2022 studies, the vast majority of CCS projects have underperformed or failed to date and hydrogen blending is plagued with safety and effectiveness concerns
This is true, but in context, it means that even symbolic attempts to reduce emissions should not be allowed.
So in summary:
Basically most of Trump’s Agenda 47 policies take the attitude that anyone who disagrees with him should be dismissed, punished, or prevented from acting.
This does imply that, whether he claims to be or not, he will act as a dictator and attempt to purge the USA of the liberty of dissent, and prolong ecological destruction and climate change.
Agenda 47 makes clear:
Trump is fighting non-existent ‘communists’, and those he calls ‘woke.’ Both terms seem to mean people he does not like or who disagree with him.
He is enthusiastic about protecting America from free speech he does not like.
People who disagree or inconvenience him are not real Americans.
The DoJ should support him, and the Party, alone, and go after people he does not like.
Education should only reinforce Republican doctrine as anything else is political.
Attempts to recognise that the USA has a history of racism, are racist.
Corporations should have free rip, particularly oil companies, and people (even shareholders) should not be free to object to corporate behavior, or attempt to alter it it.
He opposes any ideas that people should protect America (or the world) from environmental destruction, as such protection is Marxist.
Fossil fuels must be the only energy source to be protected.
He wants to stack the government with pro-Trumpists so he will never hear anything he does not like..
This, seems a complete recipe for destruction. Under Trump the USA will not face its real problems, although it may try to crush people who recognize those problems as only Marxists and Woke people would notice them and want to solve them.
Education goes the same way. It will become “non-political”. And it becomes non-political by banning everything that the Republican Party Machine might disapprove of. In a plan for an online educational institute for Adults or teens, which sounds like a good idea, he says
It will be strictly non-political, and there will be no wokeness or jihadism allowed—none of that’s going to be allowed.
This might seem an odd use of the term ‘non-political,’ but it does try and pretend that his political views are not political, but the common sense of all Americans. He will make sure that only the right material is taught in schools, and lie about what is taught in schools now. It is perhaps too much to expect him to describe what he means by wokeness, but it usually seems to mean any realisation that not all is perfect, and recognition that some people suffer from inequalities and social bias. He is also very upset about the possibility of tolerating non-traditional gender behaviour in schools.
In another display of non-politicisation of education he says:
President Trump will get Critical Race Theory, transgender ideology, and left-wing indoctrination OUT of our schools—and he will get reading, writing, and arithmetic back IN, so that America’s young people have the knowledge, skills, and training they need to get a great job and lead a successful career.
President Trump will cut federal funding for any school pushing Critical Race Theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children—and he will pursue civil rights investigations into any school that engages in race-based discrimination.
“Race based discrimination” seems to be telling people that white folk have not always been perfect, but it is a bit vague. However, Critical Race Theory, tends to be a term used by the Right, to mean teaching anyone about the history of American Race Relations. The aim seems to be that people should just ignore race relations and problems will go away, or we should learn that slavery was good, and taught ignorant Africans about agriculture.
The time has come to reclaim our once great educational institutions from the radical Left, and we will do that
When I return to the White House, I will fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics.
We can assume that, as usual, ‘Marxist’ is a non-political term, which means person who disagrees with the Republican view of America, or who wants to teach history reasonably accurately, as it is highly unlikely that any followers of Karl Marx dominate education, given the smallness of the movement in the USA. It is so small that most people do not seem to know what Marxism is about.
He continues in his non-political manner by saying that education should
protect… free speech by removing all Marxist diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucrats,… [and] schools that persist in explicit unlawful discrimination under the guise of equity will not only have their endowment taxed, but through budget reconciliation, I will advance a measure to have them fined up to the entire amount of their endowment.
Presumably the aim is to halt any criticism, diversity, equity or inclusion, and that any attempts to compensate for, or recognise, inequalities etc, will result in huge fines. My guess this that the last sentence is directed at endowed universities… because stripping away property from those who dare to differ from Republican ideas does not violate Republican ideals. Another way of interpreting his statement is that he seems to want to use education to continue the class system and inequality.
However the idea that education is only about making children into workers is perfectly standard practice.
His non-political positive vision is that:
President Trump will fight for patriotic education in America’s schools…. [because] decades of poor scholarship have vilified our Founders and the principles that they championed and have taught many of our young people to hate their own country…. we will teach students to love their country, not to hate their country like they’re taught right now.
No evidence is presented, of course, as this is not about evidence. Who when talking about education would want evidence? But the point is that students have to think America has always been good, and that other views cannot be allowed.
Non-political education is also about religion:
we will support bringing back prayer to our schools.
President Trump will once again fiercely protect the First Amendment right to pray in public schools—and he will ensure that every American’s fundamental right to the Free Exercise of Religion does NOT end when you walk into a classroom.
In reality, no one is prevented praying in American public schools, however they are prevented from forcing others to pray to their particular God. We can guess what might happen if an Islamic teacher insisted their students prayed to Allah before engaging in football.
We can also guess that his defense of the right of parents to fire teachers is to get rid of teachers who might teach forbidden topics like evolution or climate science, so religion can be another non-political tool used to stop education and support Trump.
The key slur terms like ‘wokeness,’ ‘Marxist’ and ‘vilification’ are left undefined, precisely to get teachers to worry about whether some Republican will apply these words to them, to get them persecuted or dismissed.
The point, of this non-political free speech in education policy, seems to be to suppress free speech, real education and thinking about problems and issues, and teaching only safe Republican ideology.
There are indications that Mr. Trump will attempt to end the existence of the Department of Justice as an officially neutral organistion, and make it a tool for the President’s use.
This policy seems easy to deny because his official position seems highly ambiguous. Some quotations from him imply he would do it, some quotations imply he might do it, and some quotations imply he should do it but that he won’t [1]. [2]. However it does seem compatible with his proposal to terminate rules in the constitution [3], [4] because he did not like the election results, his defense of rioters involved in the attack on the Capitol, and suggestions he might pardon them, and his convictions for financial crimes being denounced as Democrat driven witch-hunts, even when a whole jury found him guilty despite knowing they and their families would be threatened by his supporters if none of them doubted his guilt.
However, in Agenda 47, which is his official public policy document, he is much clearer as to his intentions. He writes:
There is no more dire threat to the American Way of Life than the corruption and weaponization of our Justice System—and it’s happening all around us. If we cannot restore the fair and impartial rule of law, we will not be a free country.
As President, it will be my personal mission to restore the scales of justice in America. We will have fairness and equality under the law.
To that end, I will appoint U.S. Attorneys who will be the polar opposite of the Soros District Attorneys and others that are being appointed throughout the United States. Very unfair to our population. Very unfair to our country.
They will be the 100 most ferocious legal warriors against crime and Communist corruption that this country has ever seen.
It does not take much imagination to see this as a threat to have the law ignore Republican, and allies, crimes, as this is unfair, and to appoint people who will go after his perceived enemies without any restraint at all. It is standard for authoritarian parties to hold that the law should not apply to them.
That he is trying to slur people by calling the current DoJ officers ‘Soros Attorneys’ may be taken as indicating that he plans a direct attack on the freedoms of those he disagrees with and he will purge them from the office. That he also claims the main problem is “Communist corruption” shows how fake this pretense of reforming the DoJ is. The number of communists in the USA is tiny. The number of communists in positions of power (especially in the DoJ) will be likely be non-existent. However the amount of business and corporate corruption of the kind Trump engages in seems to be very high. This is basically saying the DoJ should not go after corporate corruption, as that would be unfair and communist. By the way, Soros is not remotely a communist, he is a person that thinks corporate domination is not good, that neoliberalism leads to corporate domination and that societies should be open in their discussions of politics. In other words he disagrees with the Republican Party Machine and with Putin.
From these comments we can expect a politicised DoJ. The idea of crushing opponents seems confirmed by other promises in Agenda 47 to protect free speech in universities by getting rid of people who teach things he does not like, and protecting students from learning anything that is not Republican Propaganda. He has also promised to stop investors asking companies not to destroy the environment.
In other words ‘impartial’ means “pro-Trump”. Agree with him or else the reformed DoJ will come after you.
Fascism involves self hatred, directed at outgroup others under the guidance of a leader seeking total power and total support. The leader generates hatred of the outgroup, in order to build cohesion in the ingroup, and stop members of the ingroup talking with members of the outgroup, and getting different perspectives. This hatred may further help to reduce anxiety by distracting people from the real challenges their society faces and which the established elites don’t want to face either.
The Fascist leader
The fascist leader is always important. The leader tends to claim that he is insightful and clever, and able to benefit the nation through mysterious means; maybe God, fate, or The sacred Market is on their side? However, beyond raising hatred their actual policies and means of implementation of those policies are usually not very clear, or involve vague feel good statements: “We will build the economy to be strong again,” “we will restore true liberty,” “We will bring unity and might back to the country,” “We will avenge our fallen,” “We will stop [outgroup X] from destroying the country” etc.
The people who support the leader become special by supporting the leader’s heroic work and imagining they belong to that leader’s ingroup. Through this bonding and sense of shared labour, they become essential to the recovery of the pure Nation. They have purpose and meaning in their lives.
One certain thing is that although the Leader may attack the elites who he claims are persecuting and holding the populace down, the Leader will always seek the support of a large part of the establishment by rewarding them, and showing people what will happen to people who don’t support him. The wealth and power elites will be fine, as long as they don’t inspire his hatred, by challenging him or mocking him. They will also support him financially as it’s a worthwhile investment, if they judge he has any hope of winning.
Background to Hatred
The important thing is hatred. The Leader identifies those who are to be hated, and justifies that hatred along with the followers, who support the hatred. This builds the ingroup and its loyalties through dismissing other people.
There is always a background to the hate. Hatred does arise out of nowhere. The people have to be desperate, or motivated to embrace hatred against fellow citizens.
However, as well as vague hatred towards the elites who have failed in their job of helping the people, there may well be widespread and painful self-hatred.
In the contemporary USA, for example, the promise is that everyone can get rich. That promise is no longer true, if it has ever been true. However, at one time upwards mobility was possible for a lot of the population so it is part of the story and of people’s experience or their parents experience. Nowadays many of the middle classes may perceive their status as precarious and that they are facing a downward trajectory, or their children will be going down, due to education debts, increasing housing prices, costs of medical procedures, costs of energy, lack of wage increases above inflation, etc.
The only common explanation allowed by mainstream capitalist politics for this perceived decline in possibilities of prosperity, is personal failure or lack of hard work, not economic structures, not the real power and wealth elites, not ecological collapse, not business failure, not ‘free markets’ leading to plutocracy, or whatever. So they main option to explain things is self-hatred for that failure. They have failed their families and in their lives, by not doing what is expected or demanded for survival. If they are religious, then they may have to hate themselves for sinning, of for not getting God to bless them with money, as well. Personal failure often generates self-hatred, which acts to reinforce this resolution, and it is likely to be common in this kind of situation. Self-hatred is a powerful, discomforting and unacceptable force.
Formerly reasonably well off people may also see, or think that they see, that minorities are receiving help and gaining a status that they feel they were never offered. Employers may say, “you did not get the job because you are white”, rather than you did not get the job because we wanted to give it to the boss’s nephew, or because you did not have any experience. This ‘pleasant’ excuse builds added resentment against outgroup members. Or people may see that those who would not have received work, such as women, can now get better work than they do. The formerly well off have gone downhill, and hatred is easily shifted from self to others if people are given an excuse, or if the hatred against others is shared and reinforced by the ingroup.
The Force of Hatred
The fascist leader relieves people by saying the problem is not the result of personal failure but because of outsiders: communists, gay people, transgender people, feminists, Jews, immigrants, Muslims, atheists, Black People, Chinese people, etc. These people as groups, realistically have almost no influence on what happens in society, they are minorities. However, the leader tells their followers that the presence of these foul people explains why their prosperity has declined, their survival is threatened, and why they feel displaced from their own culture. The leader may also attack some people who might be real obstacles to the leader such as opposition parties, the media that is not 100% behind them and so on. These people can also be threatened and used in order to create the sense of a vast noxious conspiracy from which the leader will save ‘us’ good Americans (or whatever).
Self-hatred transformed
Under the Leader’s direction self-hatred can be suppressed, transformed and projected onto the scum he has identified, while the faithful validate themselves by working to reclaim the country’s glorious past. The point of projection, and why it works as a defense mechanism, is that it allows people to stop feeling self-hatred through feeling hatred for others.
As the leader keeps harping on how the outsiders are corrupting, destructive and evil, and need to be removed, no one need feel guilty about their hatred or about attacking the scum themselves. Attacking these people is perhaps distasteful as people might rather not engage with the vile creatures at all, but it is heroic. People who fight against the outgroups are glorious self-sacrificing martyrs to the great cause. If supporters are arrested and convicted it is because the minorities have corrupted the legal system, into a system of witch hunts, or they are really hostages to the corrupt order, held captive until the leader can free them, and welcome them back into the fold. Judges who convict well-intentioned fellow fascists are among the real enemies of the Country, and will have their comeuppance under the new regime of the Leader.
The Fascist leader promises to break the destructive power of these minorities, to restore the image of the perfect citizen, male, straight and of the right race and religion.
Women
Women who are affiliated with the brave and honorable men who attack corrupting scum are acceptable, as long as they recognise the prime function of women is motherhood and caring for the family. They too must show their purity by supporting their men, hating the minorities, oppositions and women who support minorities, or who want other things than motherhood and family and who are not chaste.
Hatred serves the movement and blocks communication
The hatred not only builds a more relaxed psychology for the haters (they are now justified and hating others not themselves), and they have been given a promising (if vague) imagined future, but it forges ties between the faithful and gives them a simple unity of purpose to get rid of (or break the power) of those the Leader has identified as evil. This purpose fills the previous self-hating aimlessness of their lives. As said previously, the hatred they share for these outsiders bonds them to the leader, to the ingroup, and to the vision of the future they choose.
This hatred further blocks communication as the fascists know that the outgroups have nothing worth listening to, and that anything people in the outgroups might say would, at best, be corrupting, and therefore to be rejected automatically. Likewise, people in the outgroups refrain from trying to communicate with fascists, because they think fascists are vicious and stupid. Fascists name call the opposition and the opposition responds similarly.
The abuse may trigger existing self-hatred, but this time the fascists know they are in the right, and can strike back transferring their hatred onto the abusers. This kind of action reinforces the lack of communication and the lack of mutual respect or mutual empathy. It keeps groups apart.
Calling fascists names serves the fascists, and helps them to build and rigidify the ingroup and outgroups and helps justify their cause – people will not listen to their real grievances. When outsiders call the Leader names, this also shows that the Leader is one of ‘us’ suffering the same condemnation and persecution as ‘we’ do. This abuse shows the greatness of the cause, and its necessity, and justifies action against other citizens.
The cycle of hatred becomes a positive feedback cycle, which then helps reinforce and justify the hatred, which is one of the bases of the Leader’s power.
Political Hatred as Defense Mechanism
The mutual hatred may also distract people from real and overwhelming challenges the society faces, such as climate change, predatory capitalism, growing differentials in wealth, alienation from the state etc. allowing the situation to get worse, and allowing the elites to avoid doing anything to solve the problems that people face. The elites may encourage the fascism, precisely because it allows this avoidance, and the Leader does not appear to face up to the real problems either. This also helps reduce the stress of fascist followers. They can relax, knowing that their are no problems the leader cannot solve, by getting rid of the evil outgroups that arouse anxiety.
The first draft of the Australian National Climate Risk Assessment, seemed to bypass the media.
It identified identified 56 nationally significant climate risks within 7 out of the 8 systems it looked at. 11 of these risks were identified as being of severe impact.
Climate, technology and chaos Blog 