Gov minister on trip to Japan - “Dear Japan, build us a [coal] power station”

Firstly, there's no such thing as "clean coal". Even a coal CEO admits that it's a lie.

“Carbon capture and sequestration does not work. It’s a pseudonym for ‘no coal,’” the CEO of Murray Energy, the country’s largest privately held coal-mining company, told E&E News.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS), the proposed technique, involves trapping the carbon from burning coal and then storing it permanently, usually underground. This is a challenging task, both technologically, and financially. In a world where natural gas is often cheaper than coal and where renewables are becoming more and more affordable, coal is struggling to keep up in any form. There’s a lot of concern about the scientific and economic possibility of CCS, even ignoring environmental concerns. So CCS, often referred to as “clean coal,” seems expensive, ineffective, and an overall counterproductive option.

Still, CCS has been touted as a magic solution for the natural fall of the coal industry, which is why it’s so unexpected to see someone like Murray speak against it so bluntly. Murray went on record saying that ‘clean coal’ just doesn’t do anything.

 “It is neither practical nor economic, carbon capture and sequestration,” he said last week. “It is just cover for the politicians, both Republicans and Democrats that say, ‘Look what I did for coal,’ knowing all the time that it doesn’t help coal at all.” 

 The cat is out of the bag, but really, the news here isn’t that clean coal doesn’t do anything — it’s that big execs are admitting it. ZME Science

Yet gov resources minister Matt Canavan (the idiot who told LGBT people to "grow a spine" during the marriage equality postal survey last year) has sent George Christensen on a mission to Japan with letters from the gov to ask them to build a "clean" coal power station in Australia. Queensland to be exact. Note who is the body funding the trip in it's entirety:

Mr Christensen’s trip is being entirely paid for by Minerals Council of Australia.

 He said Senator Canavan was being was true to the Government’s word that it was being technology neutral and was considering HELE coal-fired power stations.

 “We’re asking the world leaders in clean-coal technology in Japan to consider investing here.

 Mr Christensen will deliver letters to the heads of Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC) Chairman and JOGMEC Executive Vice President, and also to the Director Coal Division of Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Courier Mail

Strangely, these idiots actually think that building a new coal fired power station will be a vote winner here in Australia. It just beggars belief that they would be so out of touch with Australian sentiment that they'd think that. In what universe would that be the case? Australians are overwhelmingly in support of renewable energy, which BTW has become cheaper and cheaper.

BTW Christensen is the raving lunatic far right extremist from the National party in Queensland that was a main player in the campaign within the gov last year against the LGBT friendly Safe Schools program being adopted across Australia to try and prevent the bullying of young LGBT people in schools. He said it was "Marxist ideology" FFS.

This whole fiasco proves yet again that this gov is full of extremist far right ideologues, captive to the industries that lobby them and fund their party. The Minerals Council of Australia has long been known for it's politically far right stance against renewables and it's support for fossil fuels.

Add this to the comment by Abbott that it would be "popular" to drop out of the Paris climate change agreement. Honestly, again, in what universe would that be popular amongst the Australian community?

Yet this gov thinks that the above will make them more popular, in response to their thrashing over the weekend in the "Super Saturday" by elections. 

Some of them think that by simply canning the tax cuts to big business will save their electoral ass. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's not just that they want to give tax cuts to the rich multi-national companies whilst 3 million out of 24 or so million Australians are living in poverty. It's their denial of climate change, their love for coal, their desire to not even bother with it all and pull out of the Paris agreement.... while the world burns....

Do they honestly think Australians don't care about their kids future? Or in my case my grandkid also? Do they really think that Australians like seeing their elderly and less fortunate Australians needlessly suffer for the sake of some long disproved Reaganomic bullshit? A doctrine imported from the other side of the world?

PM Bob Hawke used to say that he had faith in the Australian people to make the right choice at election time. I always agreed with him on that. We're not all western Sydney Neanderthals who want to make refugees suffer in Australian offshore gulags. Many of us are appalled at this gov and don't appreciate their preaching to us of what we should be thinking. This gov ignores us at their peril.