Mike Hosking: Carbon neutral laws are going to wreck the country

My great fear with the appointment of those to the Climate Change Committee, that will become the Climate Change Commission when and if the Greens ever pass their carbon neutral laws is that they - to put it quite simply - are going to wreck the country.

The grand plan is in fact a two-parter, but they've only got the one part. In their zealousness for climate utopia they've forgotten the bit where we do something to replace what we do now.

In other words, if we are to move away from all the industry, business and jobs that are allegedly wrecking the planet.

What is it we are going to replace them all with?

Oh, they've got the headlines and buzz words. Renewables - that's the future, renewables. Solar panels, electric cars, recycling plants.

What is it we are doing, not figuratively but literally, to replace all the jobs and income that's going south because of their environmental obsession?

Forget of course that we are so insignificant in size and output that whatever we do doesn't actually make any difference, apart from get the attention of the like minded do-gooders.

The commission/committee, whatever you want to call it, has been charged with working out how to drag farming into the ETS. In other words, find out how to send them a bill, work out how to increase the cost of doing business.

Farmers were left out for a very good reason - taxing them is hard if not impossible.

If you burn coal, you get taxed, you can join the dots easily. Cows, not so easy.

But back to the renewables. Dairy alone is worth $16 billion, just list me the initiatives in the renewables sector that replace that income - you can't, because they don't exist.

And that's the flaw in the Greens' plan - they're all theory, no reality.

No one is going to thank you if you're carbon neutral but unemployed.

No one is impressed with a country saving the planet, that can't save itself.

As wondrous as a carbon neutral future may be, and even that's open to debate, but let's say we're all excited by it.

For now, the here and now, today, it's not real, it's not here. It doesn't supply the jobs, run the industries, sell the products or pay the bills.

The same way you might not like petrol, for right now that's how cars work.

Fossil fuels still drive the world.

Can you transition out of them? Well that's the plan. But something has to replace them.

For each coal mine closed, those workers have to go somewhere. And the income has to be regenerated from another source. Even in the areas it's happening, it's not happening at the rate it needs to. And if it isn't, and doesn't, that's your economy tanked.

The committee or commission should be as focused on new work, new jobs and new income as much as it is on taxing what's currently paying this country's way in the world.

They're arse about face.