BHP is throwing its weight around to stop the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) saying what most miners want on climate change.
What coal company wants lobbyists not to lobby for coal?
The gauntlet is down — Which heavyweight will blink first?
In one corner — The MCA — the main lobby group for miners. It’s very effective, and wants to dump the renewables target (“yay” say most miners!). In the other corner — BHP –which has just threatened to quit unless the MCA stops being skeptical of climate change.
Thing is, BHP is the largest member of the MCA, providing 17% of the funding. The colossal miner is so big, it can do its own deals. Essentially, the Minerals Council needs BHP more than BHP needs the Minerals Council. BHP is testing it’s power.
A tough test for the MCA
In Australia, the MCA is influential enough that their fierce anti-mining tax campaign helped to bring down a Prime Minister and when industries want to threaten governments they talk of running a campaign “like it”.
If they fold and serve their largest client, effectively burning off almost all their smaller clients, then the smaller clients should quit and form their own new entity. They provide 80% of the MCA funding, and for the MCA not to lobby for Australia’s second largest export industry is bonkers.
The world’s biggest miner BHP said Tuesday it would leave the World Coal Association and review its membership of the US Chamber of Commerce membership to show support for action on climate change.
BHP said it also disagreed with the US Chamber of Commerce’s rejection of the Paris Agreement and a carbon-pricing policy, and would decide on whether to leave the organisation by March.
The miner said it would remain in the MCA as the firm was still benefiting from its membership, but threatened to quit the Australian group if it did not refrain from lobbying in favour of coal power.
BHP is a coal miner — so why does it want the main miners lobbyist to NOT lobby for coal?
Do the test: Either BHP cares about the environment, or … it has more to gain from being “fashionable” on climate and pandering to bigger powers. Follow the power chain. The government is the largest entity now in any western nation. There are huge advantages in favors from governments on offer here, and banks too. BHP is so big it has private meetings with Prime Ministers to create policies that might theoretically be not be so friendly for smaller competitors. BHP is so big it uses 120 megawatts just at Olympic Dam (about 5-10% of the total power supply in South Australia). It’s so big that it can even float the option of running its own coal plant, though it may work out cheaper if the Australian taxpayer builds an interconnector to black coal in NSW. The rules are different for a player this size.
Seven advantages to BHP:
- This sabre rattling costs very little. BHP earned 18% of its profits from coal. Battling coal in Australia won’t hurt its coal sales, but it will help the rest of the conglomerate group pull strings to get better deals. The rest of BHP’s profits come from iron, petroleum, and copper. (See p. 12 of The Annual Report.) Most of their customers are in Asia (77% of total sales), so BHP can keep selling coal to China no matter what governments in Australia do to screw Australian electricity consumers. (See p. 67 of the BHP Annual Report.)
- They buy favors with both Labor and Liberals (because “what’s the difference” — both parties have leaders that want “climate action”). Tax rules, labor laws, and big-government decisions make far more difference to BHP’s bottom line than any losses on coal sales in Australia.
- The earn favors with big banks, who want to profit from a new global fiat carbon currency. Would you like a cheap loan?
- They get the green-monkey off their back. One less headache, and they get “nice” media from pandering journalists.
- They help keep competitors down (like Adani –opening new coal mines is harder than keeping old ones open in the current political climate).
- They own Olympic Dam, the world’s largest uranium deposit. Climate fear improves the prospects for nukes. It sure doesn’t hurt.
- Corporate execs living in inner Sydney and Melbourne will get more dinner party invitations for pandering to Green Gods.
If BHP control the Minerals Council they can demand even better deals on all kinds of tax and legal arrangements. (See what happened after the Resource Rent Tax campaign.) All they have to do is tell ShortenTurnbull (Turnborten?) that they will set the Minerals Council on them if XYZ clause is not added to the new policy.
If the MCA caves here it shores up BHP’s already immense power, and shows the MCA is merely the tool of BHP. Can all the other miners afford that?
Shortbull Shorbull Shobull
take your pick
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Bullshort.
50
You are almost there.
10
While the big boys play their games the Aussie battler will be ignored, run over, drawn and quartered. Sad to see Australia destroying itself all in the name of a hoax and bigger profits.
251
These buggers are having a lend of us, surely. BHP must employ a bunch of wan
110
Its unnerving …all the dystopian furturistic movies in the 1980s used to show corporations acting as govts…now we know why….
40
Games and more games covering graft, corruption and self interest.
The only reason we are not currently having massive blackouts is that the forced closure of so many businesses and factories, like the Kurri Kurri Aluminum Smelter, has kept demand in line with the dwindling electricity production.
Any lie will do as long as the public can remain ignorant of the facts.
We desperately need a Brexit, Trumpit type rebellion here to force politics back on to the rails.
KK
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Tom Steyer has shown how you can get rich with coal while condemning coal. In fact, many people get rich with coal while condemning it. I’m sure there a little coloured ribbon you can wear at Oscars ceremonies and BHP champagne lunches to show the world how much you object to coal.
Of course, it helps to bail out of the black stuff while the price is lagging. Who knows what “agonizing reappraisals” may occur if the price hits 2008 levels again. Virtue tends to evaporate above $175 a tonne.
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Wind and solar are an absolute windfall for the mining industry and BHP have awoken to this fact. The other miners have not thought it through.
The NEM is no longer an economic entity. The seeds are already sown for its economic demise as households and business install lower cost options. In fact all the latest capital expenditure on grid enhancements in South Australia have come from general revenue as consumers will leave the grid in greater number than already if grid prices continue their current trajectory.
Building a whole new decentralised power supply will require massive resources over the next 30 years and that will underpin BHPs economic power as it sources the commodities in demand. The initial push will be for more grid scale wind and solar that will force up power costs in all Australian States. As the prices become uncompetitive with load based wind and solar, consumers will opt for their own solar/battery systems and become producers. A large proportion of the grid assets will be stranded. Then there will be a pull for local generation and that is a whole new basis for commodity demand.
Wind and solar power will demand astronomical investment for it to make a significant impact on energy market share. Most of this investment is hardware based. It will create unprecedented demand for commodities and energy for their conversion. I am certain BHP understands this. Why would they want to fight against this gift from the gods.
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The big issues with cottage industry power generation are phase and frequency synchronization, and stabilization. The humble 50hz mains frequency (or 60Hz depending on geography), is driven by a central source on the network, and is used to regulate a lot of appliances that we take for granted. Some of which are life saving if, and when, they work.
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Only if the supply is connected to the grid. My off-grid inverters happily produce at 50Hz give or take small variation. It does not matter if there is some variation in frequency. Voltage regulation is excellent.
Also loads are increasingly controlled by high power electronics so the supply frequency is not the issue it used to be. The incandescent light flicker associated with voltage dips and harmonics on the grid are not as significant as they used to be. LED lights have internal control circuits that make them less susceptible to flicker from voltage dips and harmonics although the harmonics can cause premature failures of circuitry on some globes. Modern refrigerators and air-conditions use internal inverters so are not relying on supply frequency for speed control. Most power supplies for things like phone chargers, computers, TVs and other consumer electronics can work on voltage ranging from 110V to 240V and frequency from 50 to 60Hz without modification.
The only item of recent manufacture I have found that does not handle harmonics is a cheap plug-in power meter. It used a capacitor to drop the voltage to its internal electronics and that capacitor cooked when supplied from a non-sinusoidal supply.
31
I understand what you say in principle, but I get a bit twitchy when somebody says that “home generators” can link to a network of other “home generators”, and become one of several producers of a distributed AC supply, at mains voltage and frequency, without talking about phase synchronization, and frequency stabilization, and how the participants can join, and leave, the network as, and when they so desire. Also, is what you describe single phase, or three phase? If you have a potter, or a baker, in your community, they may well have a three-phase kiln, or oven.
52
Yes and this is a significant problem. To run decentralized power geenration requires new standards and a re-enginering of the grid.
Instead, they want to do it all in typical govt style of have a go, them when it fails, refuse to assign blame ( and sack ) any specific individuals or depts….
40
???? How can this be a significant problem when thousands of home solar systems already feed power back into the grid on a irregular basis.
The “Grid Linked” solar inverters must have the control systems sorted to cope with these issues ..Frequency, Phase, ..and Voltage matching, ..already.
03
Have you ever seen a mosquito riding on an elephants backside?
KK
60
Nicely put, Keith. That gave me a good chuckle.
Chad,
The home solar systems are feeding power back into a grid that has a stable reference frequency. The solar systems are specifically designed to come into line with that frequency. It is a master/slave relationship, and everybody knows who the master is.
What I was discussing with RickWill, was a scenario of a private network, where excess generation from any given user can be supplied to the commons. In such a scenario, there is no governing reference frequency, and so you will get power spikes and drops, as the generators come into phase and then drift off again. Basically, you need to have a spinning flywheel that can maintain a steady frequency. That flywheel will require energy to keep maintaining the correct speed. That is a loss to the system.
With scale, the loss gets proportionally less, and that is why we have large-scale generators today. It is a circular argument.
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This sort of mini grid will be what ends up in the central city areas. In apartment buildings the body corporate will have responsibility for the power supply. Economics will dictate if and how they interconnect to other building. Power supply system will revert to what existed in Australia before Statewide and National grids. Grids in Australia developed in order to place generators near the coal fields. It is more economic to transmit electricity than transport coal. Plus it ensures the airborne particulates are not produced in densely populated areas.
Automatic synchronisation of connecting generators has been around for a very long time so there is nothing new there.
I expect mnay household will happily work off grid. There is little benefit of being grid connected once there is a battery. Its life is a function of its depth of cycle so that is something that individuals households would most likely opt to manage. I do not see much potential for individuals to pay for batteries that a grid operator can manage although there are some battery schemes under way where costs are shared between the household and the power supplier.
In suburbia it is quite possible that the local supermarkets, with their acres of carparks, will become the local power supplier. It is already economic for shopping centres in Australia to install solar generation. As the grid becomes more unreliable and expensive the shopping centres will install diesel generators then batteries, if not already there, to ensure reliable supply. They will no longer depend the grid.
01
OK, i see your point for isolated “private mini grids”. wothout any central generating source to set standards, but i suspect a suitable battery farm could be used as a “synthetic” frequency reference control ?
Incidentally, i do not believe off grid solar with enough battery to ensure a reliable supply, is anywhere near cost competitive with either a solar grid linked system , or even a pure grid supply.
And that is in Australia with cheap solar systems and expensive grid supply.
Battery costs , system reliability, life expectancy, are still major factors of concern.
30
You are [snip] Rick. Most of the power demand is from industry and business NOT family homes with solar cells and a picket fence out the front. Even many residential users are in blocks of units with very little capacity to generate solar or wind power. Tell us how BHP will generate 120MW from rooftop solar at Olympic dam?
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Agreed, and the main issue in SA was that the 50 Hz couldnt be maintained due to a convulsing grid….
50
Sorry dude, that is a red thumb from me. Your idea’s endgame is the destruction of industrial first world. Here in Victoria it is amazing how quickly people forget. Portland smelter??? Why build such a facility way out in country Victoria? Answer is pretty simple…one it is a good deep water port and more importantly two, it gives this port facility a good baseload industry to build major HVAC power lines so that other industry can decentralize. Good reliable baseload power powers industry, powers high paid jobs. Industrialization follows reliable power. Industrialisation created the middle class!
30
but they want to save the planet from CAGW! lol.
19 Dec: ABC: Western Sydney sweated through new record high 15C hotter than city’s beaches
No, you did not imagine it — Tuesday was hot in Sydney, with Penrith in the city’s west hitting its hottest December temperature on record.
The gauge hit 44.1 degrees Celsius in Penrith, the highest ever recorded for the first month of summer.
Meanwhile in the beachside suburb of Bondi, the sea breezes were hard at work cooling the iconic location to a reasonable 29C…
Out much further west in NSW, Bourke was the hottest spot in the state, having a scorching 45C maximum day.
A scheduled blackout in the remote community of Wanaaring, tipped to also hit 45C, did not faze residents used to the heat.
“We’ve got a backup generator to look after the fridges and the air-conditioner and some of our visitors are down at the river doing some fishing and splashing around,” said Wanaaring resident Rosanne Standfield.
With more than 200 homes affected, power company Essential Energy kept it quick, replacing faulty equipment in good time.
BOM said a cold front expected on Wednesday and Thursday would bring some relief from the heat.
Sydney is forecast to reach a top of 36C, Penrith is expected to hit 42C, Parramatta 39C and Bondi 34C…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-19/nsw-hot-weather-boils-with-penrith-record/9273888
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18 Dec: Washington Examiner: John Siciliano: EPA takes first step toward replacing Obama’s climate rules for coal plants
The Trump climate rule would replace the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan with a much more limited version of the greenhouse gas rules for existing power plants.
Eliminating the Obama-era climate plan is a key part of President Trump’s deregulation agenda…
Monday’s action is the second step in the repeal process by finding a replacement for the climate change rule that satisfies the EPA’s legal requirements.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt emphasized that any replacement for the Clean Power Plan would be confined within the law, whereas Obama’s critics say his administration sought to overreach in its interpretation of the Clean Air Act.
“Today’s move ensures adequate and early opportunity for public comment from all stakeholders about next steps the agency might take to limit greenhouse gases from stationary sources, in a way that properly stays within the law, and the bounds of the authority provided to EPA by Congress,” Pruitt said.
Pruitt’s action on Monday is what is known as an “advanced notice” of a proposal, which means the EPA is in the information-gathering stage of developing a regulation…
The EPA will take comment from the energy industry and other groups on what they think should be included in the replacement plan. After the comment period ends, Pruitt and the agency with determine whether it should move ahead.
Based on the advanced notice, EPA will be looking at ways to improve efficiency at coal plants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while increasing the performance of the plants.
Environmentalists criticized the administration’s attempt at rewriting climate rules as stalling tactics toward a “do-nothing substitute…BLAH BLAH BLAH
Meanwhile, business groups welcomed the process that they hope will lead to a “better way” of regulating greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Chamber of Commerce.
“Today starts the process of developing a better way to approach greenhouse gas regulations than the Clean Power Plan,” said Karen Harbert, president and CEO of the Chamber’s Global Energy Institute.
“Our hope is that today’s request for input will begin a true collaboration between the federal government, states and all stakeholders to develop a more durable and achievable approach to addressing carbon emissions,” Harbert said. The new approach should lower emissions, preserve America’s energy advantage, and respect the boundaries of the Clean Air Act. We look forward to participating in the process.”
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/epa-takes-first-step-toward-replacing-obamas-climate-rules-for-coal-plants/article/2643867
32
BHP wants to save the planet from manmade global warming:
19 Dec: Reuters: Richard Valdmanis: Climate change driving record snows in Alaskan mountains – study
Snowfalls atop an Alaskan mountain range have doubled since the start of the industrial age, evidence that climate change can trigger major increases in regional precipitation, according to research published in the journal Scientific Reports on Tuesday.
The study by researchers from Dartmouth College, the University of Maine and the University of New Hampshire, shows modern snowfall levels in the Alaska Range at the highest in at least 1,200 years, averaging some 18 feet per year from around 8 feet per year from 1600-1840.
“We were shocked when we first saw how much snowfall has increased,” said Erich Osterberg, an assistant professor of earth sciences at Dartmouth College and principal investigator for the research. “We had to check and double-check our results to make sure of the findings.”…
“Everywhere we look in the North Pacific, we’re seeing this same fingerprint from warming tropical oceans,” said Dominic Winski, a research assistant at Dartmouth and lead author of the report. “Wintertime climate in the North Pacific is very different than it was 200 years ago.”…
President Donald Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement in June, saying it was too costly for the U.S. economy.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/climate-change-driving-record-snows-alaskan-mountains-study-100623399.html
18 Dec: CNBC: Economic optimism soars, boosting Trump’s approval rating: CNBC survey
•For the first time in at least 11 years, more than half of the respondents to the survey rated the economy as good or excellent.
•Forty-one percent expect the economy to improve in the next year, near a record.
18 Dec: CNBC: Dow rises 5,000 points in a year for the first time ever
52
16 Dec: Daily Caller: Trudeau Says Trump Was Elected ‘To Make America Great Again’
by David Krayden
Despite the increasing likelihood of a renegotiated NAFTA collapsing, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau remains positive about his relationship with President Donald Trump.
In a Christmas interview with CTV News, Trudeau said he remains positive about working with Trump because the president was elected “to make America great again.”
“Donald Trump has demonstrated that he’s a bit of a disruptive force. He does unpredictable things. He’s a deal-maker. He’s a negotiator.”
But the prime minister noted that he looks beyond the surface and finds common ground with his U.S. counterpart. “The thing that reassures me fundamentally is he got elected on a commitment to help people, to make America great again.”…
Trudeau encouraged Trump to extend his desire to assist the American people to NAFTA. “The way to help those people is to bring in trade deals and jobs and economic growth that is going to help.”…
http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/16/trudeau-says-trump-was-elected-to-make-america-great-again/
17 Dec: Jakarta Post: US wants no mention of `Climate Change’ in new Nafta
by Josh Wingrove, Eric Martin and Andrew Mayeda, Bloomberg
The US is fighting against any mention of “climate change” in a potential new environmental chapter of the North American Free Trade Agreement, according to two people familiar with talks…
In a list of Nafta negotiating objectives, the US called for the countries to bring environmental provisions, along with labor, from side agreements into the core of the deal. Still, it’s privately pushing against the inclusion of the phrase “climate change” in that chapter, and against any mention of multilateral cooperation on the environment, the two people said, speaking on condition of anonymity as negotiations continue…
A spokeswoman for US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and a White House representative didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2017/12/17/us-wants-no-mention-of-climate-change-in-new-nafta.html
32
We’ve seen “too big to fail”.
Are we seeing “too big to govern”?
The history of “company towns” doesn’t show much in the way
of good living for ordinary folks.
70
a final laugh:
18 Dec: Newsbusters: Jay Maxson: Associated Press Global Warming Alarmists fear winter Olympian’s line of work threatened
The Associated Press is freaking out about global warming threatening the future of the Winter Olympics. AP Sports Writers Andrew Dampf and Eric Willemsen (LINK) contributed to a doom-and-gloom story — run by USA Today Sports — stating that warming weather conditions are hampering U.S. and foreign Olympic ski team training opportunities. The AP’s “exclusive” agenda-driven panic attack, world competition (LINK) is underway in anticipation of the 2018 Games in South Korea.
The AP’s dire take on the Olympians’ desperate search for good powder schusses around inconvenient truths and implies they’re practically having to re-route around Dante’s Inferno. Notice the months mentioned below; they’re summer months…READ ON
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/jay-maxson/2017/12/18/ap-global-warming-alarmists-fear-winter-olympians-line-work
32
Green activists have learnt that you win by sabotaging your enemies.Everyone loses.
102
I guess I should not be surprised when a climate change denier blog turns nasty against a big miner.
329
Which blog is that, Harry, that denies that climate changes?
We have had this conversation before. Your memory retention is not improving. I thought you were getting treatment for that?
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Rereke said:
He is: he’s repeatedly banging his head on this site.
It must feel so-o-o-o-o-o good every time he stops … except for his memory …
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It’s a good point. I’ve never met a climate change denier. I have met Holocene deniers, who have a foggy notion of some “stable” climate which existed sometime somewhere. They are happy to refer to periods of radical climate change in the present and the very remote past. The topic never to be discussed is the radical climate changes of the last few thousand years, covering the period of human advance into built communities.
Discussion of Bond Events, Storegga Slides, migration periods, Bronze Age decline, Old Kingdom collapse, Optimum/Minoan/Roman/Med etc warmings, classic period sea levels, LIA…all of these subjects have to be ignored or glossed over. Too close to now, too far from industrial era.
As for miners who dig the money more than the minerals, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that well-off urbanites would want to acquire adorable opinions to go with their adorable furnishings and adorable Bowral retreats. There is a grim and narrow opinion set prevailing these days of concentrated media ownership and overarching PC. Big Green and Sustainable Development have squatted on the middle classes regardless of whether they vote Liberal flavour or Labor flavour, whether they get their daily fibs from Murdoch or Big Smug at the ABC.
In short, if we bushies, deplorables and plebs don’t hit back at Green Blob, nobody else will.
92
Interesting to see how many BHP board members actually worked on a mine site and if so how quickly they can forgot what started BHP and the great benefits it brought to Australia.
Exactly the same as qualified scientists that forget basic training to follow personal beliefs that have nothing to do with the knowledge base gifted to them.
Sound familiar Harry?……..oh and nastiness is what your lot do, our lot gets sick of the crap and takes care of business eventually.
193
I spent almost all of my working life at BHP or one of its subsidiaries and, when it was totally Australian owned, it was a very community minded organisation that had the best interests of Australia and the local community at heart. This seems to have changed since it has become an international organisation. One thing I find difficult to understand is that BHP employs some very good geologists who, in my experience, are not in the ‘warmists’ camp and so it seems that the company hierarchy may not even be listening to its own experts.
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Yonniestone.
You are coming across as a big crybaby. Oh poor little science-deniers have their snowflake feelings hurt because BHP has decided not to go full denial, and wants to act responsibly.
Comic gold… pure comic gold.
26
Well, you come across as a petulant brat, not that anybody cares.
But while I have your attention, you accuse us of “turning nasty against a big miner”. In what way did we do that? Did we threaten them? Did we call them rude names? Or was the whole thing a figment of your fevered imagination?
And now you accuse Yonniestone as “coming across as a big crybaby”. But nobody else saw it like that, to my knowledge. Perhaps if they did, they will support you in your assertion. And while we are at it, can you please explain to us what you mean by science-deniers? Do you suppose that we think that science does not exist?
And finally, Harry, can you give me a reference to where somebody on this blog (apart from you) has suggested that “BHP has decided not to go full denial”. We have discussed their business decisions, for which they have their reasons, no doubt. But few, if any, people here questioned their right to run their company as they see fit.
This is a science blog, which is basically concerned with understanding the physical truth. You will just end up looking stupid, if you keep on making stuff up in order to support whatever way you would like the world to be.
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We’re supposed to be shocked that a huge multinational corporation is mouthing a globalist consensus line?
BHP will go on talking green like every corporation including Coca Cola and Halliburton. BHP, while talking, will go on mining and where coal suits its purposes it will exploit coal. Just as Germany talks green as it digs the brown. Just as Tom Steyer was able to found his fortune on Australian and Indonesian coal dealings while he posed as a green saviour to the Northern hemisphere. As for that illustrious gold miner of the PNG region, Australia’s own Ross Garnaut…but this conversation is turning toxic, if you know what I mean.
Gawd. Could we do without the Gillardesque Big-Business-is-on-Board argument? Big Business has no choice but to be on board. That way they get to stay big and smaller businesses without PR and armies of accounting tricksters stay small. Duh.
I hate to quote Carmen here…but get real.
40
A Scientific Paper you need to read Harry.
52
That’s better …
40
Hmm, Nature.com does not seem to have any index entries relating to “climate change”. Isn’t that odd? Perhaps, like Harry, they deny that the climate ever changes, naturally?
83
because they include it under climate science?
10
So I see. Matters to do with climate and atmospheric physics, used to be accessible through Earth and Environmental Science. Atmospheric Physics seems to be no more, or put somewhere obscure.
No matter.
11
the problem with tags like that is how things are assigned to them. Is it authors, editors, an algorithm, something that combines them?
00
I take your point. But the sum total is that stuff moves around. And we thought that the science was settled. I shall blame Al Gore.
21
He’s tagged under BMI for some reason
00
🙂
01
Harry,do you have a special school where you get taught how to be stupid,or are you just born that way?
51
well Harry it is not just those who you label that find this move by bhp funny. This guy pretty much agrees with Jo
https://mustelid.blogspot.com.au/2017/12/bhp-billiton-acknowledging-climate.html
10
Proof AGW theory & IPCC are wrong has been hiding in plain sight. Demonstrated by ‘notch’ in Top-Of-Atmosphere radiation measurements, energy absorbed at low altitude by CO2 molecules is immediately redirected to water vapor molecules. CO2 has no significant effect on climate.
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Dan: Are you saying CO2 has a slight cooling effect?
30
Many papers have been written on the subject of CO2 cooling in terrestrial planet mesospheres and thermospheres, ironically in scientific journals.
50
Nether the chairman nor the CEO of ‘The Big Australian’ are Australian.
CEO Andrew Mackenzie is British and a former trustee of Demos a UK ‘think tank’ founded by “… former Marxism Today editor Martin Jacques …” (Wiki).
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Until recently I’ve thought the supposed Marxism-Climate Change™ nexus was a bit ‘over the top’, a bit paranoid, but as they say ‘just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you’ (Heller).
40
Climate change is just a trojan horse for marxists to undermine western civilisation.
Once you reseach the UNs own writings on it all, its very clear that the UN cannot be trusted.
If you understand the UN is funded directly by world govts, and the same govts would know what the UN stands for, it becomes a much bigger problem….and explains no matter who you vote for , youget UN-compatible world-govt policies being pushed, which is the very definition of a conspiracy.
70
http://humanevents.com/2011/04/02/top-10-reasons-george-soros-is-dangerous/
10
That’s interesting Manalive, I was going to suggest perhaps BHP, as a multi national, has taken on the Maurice Strong view of how to get along in the world. It is the form of governance that that presents the line of least resistance to them. They will be in the inner circle which ever way it goes. Why bother with the competition.
20
And when the accountants in the counting house warn that revenue from so called renewables is falling the big announcement will be made that nuclear power stations are now the clean energy future.
50
The key is that BHP is coking coal producer, not a major producer of steaming coal that is used for electricity generation. So it will not cost it to pose green. Follow the money.
90
Suggesting that BHP rattling the coal cage to better position themselves to acquire more coal resources at competitive prices may be attributing them with more intelligence that may be justified.
BHP is a heavily bureaucratized corporation so preoccupied with policy, procedures and ‘de-risking’ that they are unable to much more than throw their political weight around. The management structure is heavily populated with people preferring to view the world as they would like it to be, and not prepared to dig too deep in any issue lest they find some career damaging facts. Not that uncommon these days in other areas as well.
Their survival is underpinned by the resources that were acquire by previous management, back in the days when BHP was a mining company managed by mining professionals. It will take some time for the current corporate groupthink to squander these not insignificant assets.
50
Thanks for a very good 7 point analysis of why seemingly irrational action by BHP makes political and financial sense.
Typo in “3. The(y) earn favours with big banks, who want to profit from a new global fiat carbon currency. Would you like a cheap loan”
30
A little known datum: Olympic Dam happens to be far and away the largest rare earth resource in the world. It contains around 50 million tonnes of REE. On the usual relative abundance of neodymium the Nd content in the ore would be close to 0.1%. The Olympic Dam ore resource is about 8 billion tonnes, so that means roughly 8 million tonnes of Nd.
Each wind turbine contains about a tonne of neodymium. All electric vehicles use Nd based supermagnets in their motors. The price of neodymium oxide is presently about US$100,000 per tonne.
BHP does not presently recover any of the REE as far as I know.
40
I don’t know why BHP pretends to be so high and mighty.
They have been making the world’s worst resource decisions for the past 30 years.
Where are Jim McNeill and Brian Loton?
60
I read this story in The Age this yesterday. It seemed like a betrayal of Australia and its citizens by our largest company. Combined with AGL planning to close its coal fired power stations it seems we have not reached the depths of this craziness yet.
I do not understand how our business leaders can actually think that CO2 is an environmental problem. Perhaps they don’t. Perhaps it is just cynical opportunism.
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BHP Billiton is so big that Australia no longer matters. Pre-destined corporate sociopathy dominates when market forces are weak, throttled by regulations and crony capitalist deals.
It benefits BHP to have energy supply being more expensive to Australians as long as they don’t exceed the capacity for most people to pay their energy bills; at which point their turnover in Australia will emulate the Laffer curve of revenue vs tax rate. Even then; Australian consumers are a minor concern for BHP. As long as they can fill mining jobs in Australia somehow, the level of domestic consumer energy poverty is of little consequence to BHP’s shareholders; perhaps even a positive one.
The closing stanza of Henry Lawson’s Australian Engineers applies again in essence, more than 110 years after being written:
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Check the BHP Annual Report (link in the heading story) and where the real earnings come from.
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What hypocrites they are, as iron ore miners they know that to make steel factories have to burn coal. No coal, no steel …..simple as that and they know it. They are pandering to the green lobby, a very poor decision by the board members of the Big Australian. Just on keep plundering our recourse until there’s none left. Does that include Coal?
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A very poor decision by a very poor BoD which was probably recommended by a very poor CEO.
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Environmental activists have been buying shares incorporations for years now to effect change internally. No different with BHP.
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That’s another area where the Clinton Foundation cash comes in handy.
Imagine how much cash that Foundation would have if it was not being continually siphoned off by Bill, Hillary and Chelsea?
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I think trying to rationalise BHPs decision is a waste of time. All that is happening at BHP is an example of the deliberate and planned infiltration of our institutions by the watermelon greens. If you analyse every political leader ( except Trump). Major companies in particular the big energy and resource companies , every education facility from kindergarten to university , the global religions etc have all been infiltrated by greenies and I’m sure it’s not by accident. I believe that being a warmist should actually disqualify any person from being a CEO of a major company as it shows that this person is to gullible to work in the interests of shareholders. AGL and BHP are two of the most important companies in Australia along with the banks and their leadership guarantees that the Australian economy will underperform other western economies.
People theorise that by taking the stance they are they are acting in the interests of shareholders. That’s what makes these CEOs so dangerous. They are purely interested in paying homage to their Gaia religious beliefs. When industry and manufacturing collapses due to increasing electricity prices the CEOs will be extatic. Who cares if they sell less electricity as the primary motive of less carbon dioxide emissions will be achieved as they play their part in playing a role in the global socialist agenda.
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The set of seven advantages to BHP suggest that BHP is engaging in crony capitalism with its move to force others to comply with the AGW belief.
This video by Reason TV begins a discussion about crony capitalism and the alternatives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5PdMxPUxwQ
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