Everything about net zero is a fool's game: it is impossible to achieve, and a waste of time, as well as being a crippling financial burden. Australia suffers while Communist China booms using our coal.

Disagree! there's no country on earth that cannot afford MSR thorium as an alternative to vastly more expensive petroleum products.

Moreover, there are other almost free sources of energy products, e.g. biogas made from fermented organic waste.

I mean, every Australian household produces enough orgic waste> biogas to power the house and family jalopy.

A sugar mill I worked in for a season powered the entire crushing operation with the crushed cane firing the furnaces/steam engines.

Furthermore, there at least three or four other alternatives that could replace all the alluded to byproducts of crude oil, not the least using nuclear power to manufacture endless carbon neutral hydrocarbons from seawater! Using old and firmly established science!

Waste tyres can be used to make crude/bitumen/heavy duty lubricants/ asphalt alternates.

The article and the author are full of it.
Alan B.

Of course!

World leaders ( and some contributors to these comments) are wilfully blind to the simple fact that fossil fuels provide the feedstocks for almost every single product and activity of humans today. It’s not just about energy/electricity.

Another simple fact is that here in Australia just 40% of our fossil fuel usage goes into generating electricity; the other 60% goes elsewhere. It’s much the same for the rest of the world. And by some freak of nature generation of electricity is easily achieved from several other sources of energy, as everyone must realise. There’s not one other product of fossil fuels more easily replaced by substitute sources than is electricity.

For some reason these simple facts remain sources of ghastly confusion among policymakers and the public. Worse, leaders the world over keep repeating their faith in the efforts of scientists to discover all kinds of wonderful substitutes for the bounties of fossil fuels. Very touching for a scientist like me but totally misguided. We’re not magicians!