Australians will call ‘bullshit’ on green energy without clearer benefits, Rudd warns

Kevin Rudd has described Donald Trump’s cuts to support for green industries as “unfortunate”, warning that Australians would conclude the clean transition was “bullshit” if it did not offer tangible benefits to their lives. But – in some of his first comments since finishing his term as Australia’s ambassador to the US – the former prime minister said climate policies would have staying power if they delivered affordable prices, a reliable energy supply and new job opportunities. “Policy continuity will be supported if we continue not just good messaging about this, but actually deliver price outcomes, security of supply, electricity supply outcomes, new industries and new jobs, which people touch, see, feel, hear and have in their daily experience. “Otherwise, they conclude it’s all bullshit and therefore it doesn’t work,” he said, addressing the Melbourne launch of Power, Prosperity and Planet, a book by the former diplomat and Smart Energy Council international fellow Thom Woodroofe. Now leading the New York-based Asia Society thinktank, Rudd said Australia should “seize the opportunity presented by what is now unfolding in Iran and the strait of Hormuz – and frankly the shock which working people across the world are now experiencing in terms of continued hydrocarbon dependency”. “They are experiencing the physical terror of becoming insecure in their supply of what they need to drive to work if they’re still using a gasoline-based car,” Rudd said. …