With the COP26 Climate Conference successfully over, it's time for the rich to celebrate. Private jet sales are up 50 per cent over the past year. Nice Christmas presents.
A reported 400 private jets brought the COP26 millionaire cheer-squad to town.
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Twiggy Forrest was in Glasgow, showing off his $98mill Canadian-made Bombardier Global Express 7500 jet that he bought last May. These days Twiggy is worth $23 billion.
Fellow millionaire, and Twiggy's new Chairman of Fortescue Future Industries Malcolm Turnbull went along for the ride. Probably Julie Bishop was there too. She is a lobbyist associated with FFI these days.
Government incentives in Australia have the world's millionaires salivating.
It's a good time to be a millionaire. Larry Fink described the climate transition as a historic money making opportunity. Larry is the Chairman and CEO of American investment giant Blackrock, the largest asset manager in the world, with a $US10 trillion investment platform. Note that word: trillion! Fink's vision of "unprecedented investment" in technology, infrastructure and funding for poor countries would cost Australia about $100 billion a year.
The Coalition's climate action plan includes $126 billion to develop new technologies - the "technology not taxes" plan. Labor plans to spend much more.
Naturally enough, people like Fink talk loud and long about catastrophic climate change, but the world's millionaires and financiers see climate change as change in the economic climate, the transfer of wealth to the few at the top.
Would-be Australian millionaires have been quick to invest in this once-in-a-generation get-rich-quick scheme. The Carbon Growth Opportunities Fund set out to raise $10m, but quickly accepted $50 million, "mostly from wealthy Australians".
Larry Fink described the climate transition as an historic money making opportunity.
If this money was scheduled to do immediate good maybe we could wish them well. But no, it is being invested in money-making carbon credit schemes like restoring degraded farmland in Uruguay or protecting threatened species' habitat in Borneo.
Emissions trading lets polluters continue polluting. The European Union emissions trading system is the biggest in the world with prices rising at 65 per cent annual compound rate over the past four years. If you have money, you can make money.
The rest of us, those who work hard but struggle to buy our own house let alone save the odd million to invest, are going to have a much harder time paying bills - and paying back the loans (with interest) required to suddenly change Australia's energy balance.
Long-term changes demanded instantly by governments cost money. When the first vehicle pollution laws were introduced by the Whitlam government, Australian car makers had a mere two years to invent a solution.
The result was the makeshift exhaust-feedback systems fitted to vehicles like the 1976 HX Holden - more fuel, less performance and lost sales. The 1976 VK Valiant was notorious for not starting when hot, probably expediting the end of Valiants in Australia.
With another two years of development, Chrysler's ELB Valiant has a computerised system which met emission rules, saved fuel and performed well. But it was too late, sales had tanked and the brand died. Likewise the HZ Kingswood was a best-selling model, but the last Holden "big car".
Within a couple more years, Australian Commodores and Falcons had aluminium heads and fuel injection, meeting emissions goals with innovation. Retooling costs big money, but can be absorbed when change is introduced gradually.
Haven't we learnt anything from rushing into COVID lockdowns and big spending? Australia now has a $134 billion COVID deficit. Just to pay back our COVID loans Australia faces deficits until 2060.
Add in a billion or two for each millionaire investor in climate schemes, and ask yourself, "How will Australians pay that money back? What if interest rates rise?"
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As Larry Fink said when addressing a Deutsche Bank virtual event, "If our solution is entirely just to get a green world, we're going to have much higher inflation, because we do not have all the technology to do all this yet." Sort of like the HX Holden?
How do governments propose to make multinational financiers accountable to voters?
Enjoy this Christmas. A dramatic fall in living standards faces ordinary Australians, no matter which party wins the election.
