- Australian mining magnate Andrew Forrest is attending the COP28 climate conference in the United Arab Emirates.
- He says energy bosses should have their heads “put up on spikes” for not committing to phase out fossil fuels.
- It comes as some companies, including the national oil company of the UAE, defy calls for a wind-down of fossil fuel use.
Quote with context:
And he took particular aim at the oil and gas bosses who were dismissing the calls, describing them as “selfish beyond belief”.
He said their actions were jeopardising the lives of millions of people in overwhelmingly poor countries who were at risk of “lethal humidity”, or an inability to cool themselves down. “If you can’t cool yourself you’re actually an oven burning around 100 watts all the time,” Dr Forrest said.
"If you can [sic] get rid of that heat energy, you cook.
"And when these deaths occur — and they’re occurring now, but when they occur at much larger-scale — I want these so-called people who are very smart to be held to account.
“It’s their heads which should be put up on spikes because they wilfully ignored and they didn’t care.”
We’re way overdue for guillotine day.
Absolutely.
Australia stands to be the nation that can do so damned much towards pushing for a green future right now.
It’s a mining powerhouse with access to the minerals needed for future green energy tech. It should be able to mine them more safely, wholesomely, and justly than pretty much any other nation. Mining stuff like lithium is an ugly business, but doing it in a country that has basic labor and environmental protection rules with the technology to do so at scale would be huge. If the Aussies really dedicated themselves to it, current issues with lithium or cobalt could be deflated substantially.
A rational “mining magnate” has everything to gain from a green future, and Australia has an opportunity to become very wealthy in the process – provided it builds the industry, gets support from the government, and the rest of the world is buying. The IRA in the US means at least that market is very keen on friendsourced raw materials.
It should be able to mine them more safely, wholesomely, and justly than pretty much any other nation. Mining stuff like lithium is an ugly business, but doing it in a country that has basic labor and environmental protection rules with the technology to do so at scale would be huge.
Sorry but all I’m hearing is that it would be marginally more expensive, which means the market will either need to go where there aren’t protections, or they’ll have to gut protections here to accommodate the rights of the wealthy to make money by spilling other people’s blood.
Capitalism got us into this mess, it won’t get us out. It puts money above all else, so if you ask it to do anything good it will laugh at you and make a jerk off motion.
Australia is currently the worlds largest producer of lithium, so it can’t be that much more expensive. It would definitely make more sense to invest in scaleing up than their the coal mines.
Compared to all the other expenses, safety measures really are marginal costs, so it’s kind of wild that bosses will cut them whenever possible.
But capitalists know that anything that constrains their abuse of workers gives them less power over them, and they can’t accept that. Being a boss is really about domination above all else. The money is a proxy for that goal.
The owner class have to view the rest of us as inferior. When they’re forced to acknowledge our humanity they respond with rage, because that sense of superiority justifies their position.
Without it there’s no explanation for why their money allows them to do what they do. It’s the floor they stand on, and if it’s not there then they look down and see a yawning pit of horror. That separation between them and us both protects them from seeing how monstrous they really are, and it traps them.
It’s not all bad news.
West Aus is getting big into renewable hydrogen. Basically using solar farms to crack hydrogen from sea water.
Last time I read up about it there were three new cracking facilities under development.
The whole process seems so magical to me as a non-science person, basically selling sun & sea water as a form of energy that for all intents and purposes has no waste products.
All I can find is this government PDF where there is no mention of investing in the renewables they plan as input.
I fear there is a scammy intention to build the infrastructure, promising green hydrogen then “in the meantime” just use gas to produce blue hydrogen.
From my other comment:
The largest in the South East of Western Australia is the Western Green Energy Hub which could generate 50GW of wind and solar energy and use that to produce 3.5m tonnes of green hydrogen every year. It will take several more years before a final investment decision is made and another decade to construct, but that’s the nature of large scale projects.
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Here’s a good primer on electrolyzers, though it is very US (IRA)-oriented. Assuming you like a podcast (or reading a transcript of one).
I am extremely split about Forrest.
As far as mining magnates go, he is obviously a world apart from the likes of Rinehart and Palmer. He makes the right noises in many areas, and seems to be doing a lot of good things.
Ont he other hand, a number of his philanthropic projects spent a lot of money while going nowhere, his company FMG is involved in long-running disputes and controversies regarding mining without permission in Aboriginal land while destroying cultural and sacred sites, and he was the architect of the abominable cashless welfare card.
You can’t be a “mining magnate” and a good person. That’s just not possible.
“Andrew Forrest , mining billionaire” vs “fossil fuel bosses”
Let Them Fight.
As much as I agree with him, if the guillotine were to come out for the fossil fuel executives, what exactly makes him think he’ll be spared?
what exactly makes him think he’ll be spared?
I don’t really know anything about this but… the article says he acknowledges that his own companies are prominent greenhouse gas emitters, he is investing $6b to improve his companies, and that he has large investments in renewables as well.
IDK how true that is, but thats what it says.
He is investing in greenwashing such as his “green hydrogen”.
Unfortunately it is not green. It is a scam.
You’re going to have to explain how green hydrogen is a scam because I’m not going to listen to an obscure podcast to try to understand your point.
You need electricity to make hydrogen. Hydrogen maybe maybe could be part of the overall energy solution someday by providing a similar portable, fluid energy store as gasoline and diesel do now. But the technological challenges (like just getting the lightest gas in existence to stay in a container, for example) make it not the thing we should be investing large sums of money in right now.
We need to fix the underlying electricity generation problem before we can really even think about hydrogen as a fuel.
It’s worth noting that hydrogen is key to a large number of industrial processes, including the majority of metal and fertilizer production. While its use in fuel cells and small vehicles is rather silly, it’s about the only contender outside nuclear for ships. The conversion loses make it impractical for anything you can directly electrify, but that’s would only be a small fraction of a large industry.
Given this hydrogen is currently produced near entirely with natural gas and with several times the emissions of diesel, the idea of replacing that production with production powered by renewables is reasonable, especially since you need to overbuild solar and wind capacity so much to ensure constant power. Useing that spare capacity to make hydrogen, which doesn’t care about when it gets made, is also responsible.
We need green and pink hydrogen, the scam is coming up with more consumers of our currently minuscule supply.
You need electricity to make hydrogen.
Indeed. There’s a number of huge solar farms in the development / approval phase in Western Australia.
The largest in the South East of Western Australia is the Western Green Energy Hub which could generate 50GW of wind and solar energy and use that to produce 3.5m tonnes of green hydrogen every year. It will take several more years before a final investment decision is made and another decade to construct, but that’s the nature of large scale projects.
I don’t know how real the transportation problems actually are. Australia is already exporting liquid hydrogen. The industry doesn’t seem concerned about it.
Nobody in Australia is producing green hydrogen. It would be nice if they started. None of his projects include renewable power to make the hydrogen. He just says he’ll buy it somewhere. That story is 2021, yet no renewable powered hydrogen production yet.
He isn’t only investing in this. Look into Tatterang and its portfolio. He and his (ex) wife are among the biggest players in the domestic green energy space.
Yes, he has made billions digging up dirt and selling it to China. But he seems to recognise that he has enough money to get by and there might be a bit left over to try and make the world a bit better.
He and his (ex) wife are among the biggest players in the domestic green energy space.
and theeeeeeere it is.
If there’s no shift to that space, there no money to be had.
This is one of his (note there are no WA operations)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CWP_Renewables
The other venture it seems he didn’t want to invest as much in as his project partner Cannon-Brooks so the latter bought him out. At least that is how I quickly read it. It also was not in WA.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link
So it still looks like his WA Green Hydrogen investment is indeed a scam.
Last month we learned that quietly scrapped plans for a multibillion-dollar wind and solar farm that was a centrepiece of its plan to decarbonise the Fortescue’s iron ore operations in WA.
I don’t understand the point you are making. He’s trialing the concept of using renewable energy to generate hydrogen that can later be used. What about this is a scam, exactly? That the process isn’t profitable at the moment? I think that’s the whole point, he is going to try and make the process more profitable and well, he can afford to run it at a loss for a while.
He’s spending $3 Billion on this trial, great if he has that to experiment with. If it pans out for him, it might become a profitable venture. If it doesn’t pan out, well at least he’s trying to do something worthwhile with his money.
It looks like a cynical ploy to greenwash gas. Simple.
And what exactly is wrong with burning Hydrogen?
I can understand if your concerns are to do with storing and transporting hydrogen. But what’s your problem with burning it?
A well timed petroleum filled jet
as far as rich guys go twiggy ain’t the worst
Hard agree. But there won’t ever be any justice because there never is. Too many selfish cowards out there.
News last month shows how much bs Twiggy is spinning.
Fortescue [Twiggy’s company] has quietly scrapped plans for a multibillion-dollar wind and solar farm that was a centrepiece of its plan to decarbonise the company’s iron ore operations in Western Australia.
https://www.afr.com/companies/mining/fortescue-dumps-vast-wa-wind-solar-farm-project-20231105-p5ehna
Basically Forrest keeps signing deals to make green hydrogen or green ammonia around Australia, and gets paid by the government . Then he backs out of the renewable power plants and pockets the cash. Same as 2021, only more blatant as time goes on without progress.
If he’s serious about it we’ll see him suicide bomb COP29.
That’d be a performance waste compared to having his goons plant bombs or whatever.
Hear, hear.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Australian mining magnate and climate campaigner Andrew Forrest has lashed out in an extraordinary outburst aimed at oil and gas supremos, saying their heads should be “put on spikes”.
Tensions are increasing in Dubai over the nature of the final wording of the COP summit, with some pushing for a complete end to the use of coal, oil and gas, as others resist the demand.
Earlier this week, the head of US oil and gas behemoth Exxon said there had been too much focus on renewable energy and not enough attention paid to the role hydrogen, biofuels and carbon capture and storage could play in cutting emissions.
Exxon, along with fellow American giant Chevron and the national oil companies of Saudi Arabia and COP28 host the UAE, have defied calls for a wind-down in fossil fuel use by investing heavily in new capacity and the acquisition of competitors.
According to Mr Forrest, attempts by the world’s oil majors to hold up carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a solution to global warming were a red herring.
For all the consternation, many of the leading figures in attendance — including US Climate Envoy John Kerry and the head of the UN body that oversees COP — have backed the need for the industry to be involved.
The original article contains 979 words, the summary contains 215 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
not enough attention paid to the role hydrogen, biofuels and carbon capture and storage could play in cutting emissions
There has been a considerable amount of attention to the role they could play in cutting emissions, and the conclusion is that their role is to maintain the profits of the fossil fuel industry by distracting everyone from things that would actually cut emissions.
Ok, Robespierre.
