Preserving our intergenerational inheritance
By Freya Leach
First published in the MRC’s Watercooler newsletter. Sign up to our mailing list to receive Watercooler directly in your inbox.
A 2023 YouGov poll found that 75% of young Australians are concerned about climate change. Alarmingly, two-thirds of young people said climate change was hurting their mental health.
How should young conservatives and liberals navigate this challenge?
The environment is part of the intergenerational inheritance passed down to each generation. Conserving it has always been part of our conservative tradition, as Edmund Burke has suggested. Burke described society as “a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born”.
But surely environmental conservation shouldn’t come at the expense of conserving the other positive characteristics of our society. What good is it to inherit a healthy environment if it comes at the expense of a degraded social fabric and an economic system in ruins?
Net zero plus cheap energy - both have an impact on young Australians
While much has been made of the negative impact of climate change on my generation and our children, much less has been made of the poor investment choices and the impact that structurally higher energy prices will have on our country for generations to come. In 2004 Australian consumers enjoyed the fourth cheapest retail electricity prices in the OECD behind Canada, Norway and the United States. By 2021 we had fallen to 10th place in the energy affordability ranks.
It is simplistic and reductive to look at our intergenerational contract and focus solely on reducing emissions. Affordable and reliable energy has been vital to Australia’s success over many generations. Cheap energy gave us advantages in mining, agriculture and manufacturing. The obstacles of isolation and scarce labour were overcome and Australia was transformed into one of the world’s most successful trading nations. Affordable and reliable energy increased prosperity and improved our quality of life.
Expensive energy has a regressive impact on household budgets. Higher energy prices also have a disproportionately large impact on young people - who are generally earning lower incomes. Part of the intergenerational inheritance Australia must leave to its young people is cheap and reliable energy. Without it, we will not have the same opportunities for prosperity that previous generations of Australians have enjoyed.
Clean and cheap energy
How do we pass an intergenerational inheritance of both a clean environment and cheap energy - an essential condition for prosperity? While renewables will play a role in providing clean energy - they need to be firmed up with stable baseload power. The international community recognises there is no way for the world to transition without nuclear. At COP28, 22 countries signed the declaration to triple nuclear energy by 2050. While Australia has fallen from 4th to 10th in the OECD for energy affordability, three of the countries that have leapt ahead of us, Finland, Switzerland and South Korea, rely heavily on nuclear power to provide reliable baseload power. France generates over 70% of its electricity from nuclear power – the largest nuclear share of any country globally – and its electricity sector emissions are one-sixth of the European average.
Labor’s irrational and ideological aversion to nuclear power is leading to poor investment choices that my generation will have to pay for. In the interim, while China permits the construction of the equivalent of two new coal-fired power plants per week, the impact on global emissions is negligible.
Nuclear vs renewables - a false dichotomy. The answer is both.
Throughout the energy debate, Minister Chris Bowen has tried to paint the Coalition as anti-renewable, driven by ideology not facts. After all, Bowen’s Bible, the inerrant and infallible GenCost report, says renewables are better. This is a mischaracterisation of the Coalition’s position. Renewables can be part of the energy mix, alongside nuclear. The only major party that is totally opposed to one form of clean energy on ideological grounds, is Labor.
Perhaps we should reverse the burden of proof. Minister Bowen, show us one country that has been able to transition to clean energy using only renewables. Better yet, show us one that has also been able to keep the lights on at an affordable price.
We should not be fooled by Bowen’s high school debating tactics. In accusing the Coalition of being closed-minded, ideological and anti-clean energy, he is making an admission: it is Labor that is closed-minded and ideological. Even members of the Labor movement are speaking out against Blackout Bowen. The Australian Workers' Union, one of the country’s largest unions with around 86,000 members, supports nuclear. AWU National Secretary Dan Walton said it’s time to reconsider our ban on civil nuclear energy. He pointed out that “SMRs are at the core of the US and British plans to create zero-carbon economies. Australia should be following suit”. Exporting uranium overseas but not allowing it to be used for energy in Australia is exporting Aussie jobs and strangling Aussie prosperity.
Conclusion
Anyone who considers themselves to be a conservative should care about the intergenerational inheritance we pass onto the next generation. The Left has got the balance wrong; my generation’s inheritance needs to include a clean environment and cheap energy. One without the other will degrade our societal fabric. We must also recognise, as many in Gen Z do, that we should be technology agnostic. Lift the ban, drop the politics and let the people and the market decide. Fear mongering, blind faith in one-sided modelling and high school debating tactics do nothing to steer Australia towards a more prosperous future.