Australian Targets

Thursday, November 30, 2023

Stop climate 'virtue signalling' and move past fossil fuels now says Mining Billionaire Andrew Forrest on his way to COP28

Andrew (Twiggy) Forrest is no saint regarding his mining interests, with allegations his companies destroyed sacred indigenous cultural sites. 

Increasingly, he has championed climate action, energy transition, phase out of coal, oil and gas, phase out of fossil fuel subsidies, and Australia becoming an energy superpower based on our excellent renewable energy sources, and critical minerals. In this interview he calls for the old guard in fossil fuels to get out of the way, and calls Australia a Petro-state.


Forrest is non-executive Chaiman of Fortescue Metals Group (FMG). He has a strong interest in maintaining the health of the oceans and in 2019 was awarded a PhD in Marine Science from the University of Western Australia.


This interview on ABC's The Business. Here are a few excerpts.

"We actually have to stop all the greenwashing, all the virtue signaling. We just have to step Beyond fossil fuel. So I'm going up there to really challenge my fellow industrialists, but particularly the fossil fuel companies, to deliver an energy which isn't going to continue destroying the planet and to my fellow industrialists to say 'when are you going to stop burning fossil fuel?'" 

"Australia, particularly Western Australia, is a petro State. Until we move on from this fairly archaic rear Vision view of where energy should come from and start utilizing the massive energy which Australia has by just a enormous multiple of any oil and gas we could ever discover. Which is our own sun and wind and so we start using that to create all our energy and to export energy all around the world. We're just going to be a backward looking Petro State."  

"Australia has a lot more to go but we've got leaders who are looking at the world with clear eyes and saying 'hey yeah we've got all this gas but we've got so much more sun and wind what does the world want it doesn't want gas that's just methane. It's cooking the planet let's let's get after sun and wind it can create the green hydrogen, it can create create the green electricity. It  can do everything which gas can do only need a wide democratic and very competitive basis."

"We can utilize the renewable energy we have greater than any other country in the world. Utilize it here to make all the energy which Australia needs and which we can start a export industry which would put our little gas industry into the shade. 

"We've just got to have the vision, Alicia, to go and drive this and that's where I'm talking about leaders for character and that's why I'm going to COP. To say: 'hey show character in your leadership. If you say you can't stop burning Fossil fuel, well what about you get off the stage and let someone who can stop burning fossil fuel run your company you're clearly an old guard. See ya.'"


Have a watch of his statement on lethal heat back in September 2023: Global warming driven Lethal Heat poses huge mortality risk. Business needs to lead, guided by government policy says Fortescue Chairman Andrew Forrest

References:

ABC News, The Business, 30 November 2023,  Stop climate 'virtue signalling' and move past fossil fuels now, Twiggy Forrest says | The Business https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ8x4eRdklw

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