“Let the record show a rational voice responding to irrational, emotive, magical thinkers. Ken Brook, take a bow for history.”
The critics of climate alarm and forced energy transformation are winning on social media also. A recent example is a response to a post by David Ritter, CEO of Greenpeace Australia Pacific, who tried to take the moral high ground against fossil fuels. But one energy realist, Ken Brook, was right there with an effective rebuttal.
Ritter wrote:
The mental gymnastics on display by the gas industry and their pals in politics deserves an Olympic medal. Responding to our bold action at yesterday’s Australian Domestic Gas Outlook conference, the likes of Minerals Council of Australia chief Tania Constable and Nationals Leader Matt Canavan are doubling down on fossil fuel extraction as the solution.
Our outsize dependence on climate-wrecking fossil fuels is what has gotten us into this mess in the first place. You wouldn’t cure lung cancer by prescribing cigarettes, so why would you increase fossil fuel use when Australians are feeling the pain of expensive gas and petrol, and devastating extreme weather impacts?
Renewable energy can’t be disrupted by war, is becoming more affordable by the day, and is a critical solution to energy independence, cost of living, and the climate crisis. We stand by our message: Make gas corporations pay their fair share, and accelerate the phase-out of fossil fuels and the adoption of clean, affordable renewable energy.
Ken Brooke retorted:
This biased post from David Ritter is a thinly veiled attack on the fossil fuel industry dressed up as moral argument. There’s plenty of rhetoric — “mental gymnastics”, cigarette analogies — but almost no engagement with how the real world actually works. Energy systems aren’t optional lifestyle choices. They underpin: • industry • transport • agriculture • supply chains
You don’t just “phase them out” because you don’t like them. And the idea that renewables somehow sit outside geopolitics is fantasy. Every part of that system depends on: • global manufacturing • critical minerals • concentrated supply chains
This isn’t analysis — it’s advocacy built on selective framing. If you’re going to argue for change, start by acknowledging the system you’re trying to replace. Ignoring it doesn’t make it disappear.
Then a wide-eyed malcontent came in. Phoebe Coyne–“Plural, Postgrowth, Regenerative and Degrowth Economics advocate. Social Ecological Systems Resilience and Complexity strategist”–commented:
Correct on initial post- because our governments have been stalling with the same SPIN, and kicking the can- and taking the piss for DECADES…
That’s not a matter of incompetence of GPAP, or the eNGO sector calling out the governmental contempt, plutocracy and sycophancy for as many decades…. indeed-the “real world actually works” with said plutocracy, sycophancy, and genuine governmental ecocide, ecoterrorism and contempt for actually safeguarding our collective futures, as demonstrated by incompetence of intergovernmental leadership at the United Nations….
It’s as futile attempting to throw detonated grenades of your disenfranchisement and disillusionment as it is attempting to compel decisive Federal Parliamentary Leadership to table Ecocide Law as the Fifth International Crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court any time during the repeat 70’s Oil Crisis we are completely unprepared for adequate Resilience, because of said government inaction for as many decades. But here we are.
Ken Brook politely responded to this incoherent rant:
Appreciate the response, but language like “ecocide” is doing a lot of work here. That’s an extraordinary claim — it needs extraordinary, system-level evidence. Otherwise it’s just escalation, not explanation. Instead of faux ideological environmentalism I think it’s time we withdraw from UN commissar oversight and start revoking NGO charity status.
I hope you oppose wind energy industrialisation on the Queensland Great Dividing Range too. The silence indicates GPAP doesn’t. You are happy enough we get “renewable” solar, wind, battery and EV materials from trashing the developing world: – child labour for Congo blood cobalt; coerced labour to produce solar panels in Xinjiang; toxic hell hole rare earth mining in Inner Mongolia; depriving native peoples of water rights in Chile and Bolivia for lithium production; and destroying rainforests and coral reefs in Indonesia for nickel mining. For starters.
Brook again made his argument to another critic:
What’s missing from the Greenpeace Australia Pacific position is any serious consideration of consequences.
There are no large-scale, proven substitutes yet for:
• steel and cement production
• fertilisers and ammonia
• high-temperature industrial heat
• aviation and shipping fuels
These aren’t minor details — they are the foundation of modern economies. Force a rapid fossil phase-out before substitutes exist, and those activities don’t stop. They move. To countries with:
• weaker environmental standards
• higher emissions intensity
• lower labour protections
So what do you actually achieve?
• no change in global demand
• no elimination of production
• just offshoring emissions and industry
Plus:
• loss of capability
• loss of jobs
• increased dependency
That’s not climate policy. That’s ideology with consequences.
Let the record show a rational voice responding to irrational, emotive, magical thinkers. Ken Brook, take a bow for history.
P.S. My comment was short: “Social justice = oil and gas.”