Scott Morrison, the car industry and the ‘zero emissions’ lie
A prime ministerial populist thought bubble has declared the Australian automotive sector is ‘on track’ for zero emissions by 2050…
The Australian car industry’s grubby little anti-consumer lobby group in Canberra has out-done itself this time. Upliftingly.
Sorry to be blunt, but that’s just bullshit. It’s epic, intelligence-insulting bullshit headlining a press release from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries on Tuesday, Feb 2, 2021.
Pro Tip: There’s about 1000 kilos of steel in an average car, dudes. It takes 600 kilos of coke (not the kind one might occasionally ingest off the booty of a Ming moll during an uplifting monthly sales meeting) to make 1000 kilos of steel. The coke I’m talking about is a consequence of burning 750-ish kilos of coal. This is what you must do to make 600 kilos of metallurgical coke to make 1000 kilos of steel, to make one car - even an electric one.
So, it depends on the coal, but the CO2 to coal ratio is typically about two for one by weight - so it’s about 1500 kilos of CO2 just to make the coke to make 1000 kilos of steel to make one car.
This does not include the various manufacturing processes, and the other ingredients and shipping a million cars here on ships powered by heavy fuel oil. It’s just to make the raw steel to make one car.
This is why humanity can’t consume its way to a solution to the CO2 problem. It’s a real problem if you sell products and want to greenwash them.
Not to labour the point but if you make a car out of aluminium, like those environmental vandals at Audi (spruiking its recyclability like disingenuous arseholes) or even largely out of aluminium parts, like Electric Hey-zeus, the pro tip there is every 1000 kilos of aluminium intrinsically involves the emission of about 10,400 kilos of CO2. Let’s call it 10 for one, kilos of CO2 per kilo of aluminium, in every new car.
This ratio is the same, roughly, irrespective of whether you make a shiny new aluminium shitbox from recycled Coke cans or from virgin bauxite, inconveniently. Recycling doesn’t really save you any CO2 when it comes to aluminium.
So, against this inconvenient backdrop of facts, how exactly are we going to justify the allegation of zero emissions, in 30 years, down under?
I see. So, it’s a lobby group suck-piece. That explains a lot. Tony Weber there (boss of the anti-consumer lobby mob).
If you’re not from around here, the Australian Prime Minister is Scott Morrison, a coal industry-humping Pentacostal worshipper, more or less. Pentacostals, of course, believe that the fate of human beings sort of hinges on the battle between Jesus and Satan, and not so much on the burning of fossil fuels.
Pentecostalism was - insofar as I can tell - more or less made up in about 1900. Satan versus Jesus is of course quite compelling, and speaking in tongues - so novel and endlessly entertaining.
Jesus of course is the ultimate winner in this fight. It’s fixed. Everyone knows it. (I don’t, frankly, know why Satan bothers. The deck is stacked against him. Nobody ever puts the farm on Satan. Not in Missouri, anyway.)
But despite all this certainty, in the minds of some, I’m just not that confident in the Prime Ministerial ability to plan for the future when he sees the future for mankind being a consequence of Jesus more or less spitting on Satan’s grave, then grabbing a trowel and some bricks and re-making Heaven and Earth.
Pro tip: You can’t be Pentecostal and not believe this stuff. It’s an intrinsic part of the deal. And you are allowed to believe it - which is beside the point. I’m just saying it might be an impediment to dealing with a climate emergency.
Anyway, Pentacostal Six said recently at the National Press Club that he hoped to reach zero net emissions by 2050, and that doing so would depend on science and technology - which does seem somewhat at odds with just letting Jesus figure it all out later.
I don’t know how these two conflicting points of view are to be reconciled. Here’s the Press Club 2021 transcript >>
Mr Weber again there, doing what lobbyists do best. But I would also suggest that a thought bubble from Pentecosal Six at the Press Club is hardly the same thing as a detailed plan locked in place by legislation.
And we do currently emit about 500 million tonnes of CO2 annually, in Australia, which is hardly trivial. We are good at that. Plus, we double that, effectively, by exporting a shitload of coal to be burned elsewhere. A billion tonnes of CO2 in total, here and there.
Coal is a bit of an earner for us, too. Coal is Australia’s number two export, worth about $60 billion bucks a year - just behind iron ore on pole position. It’s a photo-finish.
Would it not just be simpler to let Jesus figure this all out later? Just a suggestion.
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But perhaps the Mr Weber can do today what the son of God has - vaguely - promised to do for us in the End Times:
This is barely English, from a syntactical position. And drivetrain is one word, dude. The joint really has gone to shit since Lenore left to run that valet parking operation in Mascot. Just saying.
More to the point though, this FCAI Emissions Standard is a bullshit, and entirely optional, amalgamation of borderline fluff, the main purpose of which, insofar as I can tell, is to hump Toyota’s leg like a dog that just ate your grandfather’s stash of viagra.
“To confidently plan.” Jesus. The verb is ‘to plan’. Confidently to plan. To plan confidently. Both OK. To ‘confidently plan’ - not OK, dude. Don’t split the infinitive.
That’s been independently verified by The Shat. He’s the only man on Earth - and OK, he doesn’t spend all of his time here, but you get my point - the only man with the infinitive-splitting imprimatur to boldly go anywhere.
If Jesus goes off the reservation and loses by TKO to Satan, late in the twelfth, like, right at the End Times, I believe The Shat will plunge the Trowel of Destiny into Satan’s black heart and then just clean things up generally. Spray the planet with ‘WD - CO2 Away’ (patent pending) and then Maylin Manson will tune all the harps back up. Things of that nature.
To me this is as credible as most faith-based belief systems. But you are of course entitled to believe anything you want. I’ve been praying to The Shat and he answers my prayers just as often as Thor or Poseidon did.
In terms of confidently planning future product for the Australian market - are you smoking crack dude? Product planning in Australia is where the factory overseas says: You will sell this car. Make it happen.
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About face
And while we’re clearing the air on this, let’s not forget that one of the Federal Chamber’s most significant achievements of the past three decades is to delay the ongoing adoption of stricter exhaust emissions standards, compared with the rest of the developed world. We have lagged years behind - all thanks to the hard work of grubby lobbyists.
This was done mainly to hump the legs of Holden and Ford. And that worked out so well, long term. So what if there was a small cost in terms of thousands of tonnes of additional CO2 and premature deaths in the population? As long as Ford and Holden got what they wanted, that’s the main thing. This is what I mean when I say ‘anti-consumer lobby group’.
Pro Tip: The Euro 6 emissions standard was introduced in September 2015. Five and a half years later, we still don’t require compliance with it in Australia. So, well done there.
Always nice to hear from the FCAI, though, I think you’d agree. To Tony Weber I’d say: Well done on this one, dude. Tuesday’s Prime-ministerial leg-humping press release was a triumph on so many levels. (More than even I expected.)
Please accept, therefore, on behalf of your fine, upstanding organisation, the inaugural February AutoExpert Perpetual Platinum Poopie award for poignant planet polluting pri-minsterial populist appeasement. It’s the very least my cock and I can do. Which is what we think you deserve, frankly. The least we can do. Love your work, dude.
You’re almost as good as me at Making Australia Less Shit. We should have some sort of civic ceremony for that. The annual MALS awards. Malcolm Turnbullshit could host it. I’m happy for mine to be silver, as long as you get gold, Mr Weber.
Looking forward to the next badly written, Toyota-appeasing FCAI bullshit press release already.
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