The famed ‘cultural cringe’ of the Sixties and Seventies was exacerbated by the realisation that most artistic and fashionable trends back then tended to arrive on our shores several months or even years after capturing the imagination of our European and American cousins. This was largely due to the tyranny of distance and the time it took for goods and merchandise to be shipped here, but it was also an inevitable result of us being cut off from the daily discourse of life in the ‘swish’ capitals we so desired to emulate.

During the late-Seventies and Eighties, much of that ‘cringe’ was overcome and even reversed as our artists, sportspeople, entrepreneurs, musicians and film-makers made their own mark abroad.

Nowadays, of course, thanks to the immediacy of Big Tech’s social media and streaming platforms, the largely uninspiring mono-culture of the Twenty-Twenties can be enjoyed, if that’s the right word, in Australian cities and towns as rapidly as it can overseas.

But the ‘cultural cringe’ would appear to have been replaced by a ‘climate cringe’.

Yet again, Australia finds itself lagging months if not years behind trends that are shaping the zeitgeist in European and American capital cities. Chief among them, of course, is the steady abandonment by our cousins on the Continent of the insane ‘net zero’ fantasy.

Politically, ‘net zero’ is increasingly on the nose in many European countries. This week, the Swedish parliament officially abandoned its 100 per cent renewable energy target to meet net zero by 2045, replacing it with a ‘technology-neutral’ target. Many green-tinged Europeans were dismayed, but as Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson told the Swedish parliament, ‘We need more electricity production… we need a stable energy system.’

Of course, for the Swedes, blessed with huge mountains and deep lakes but little abundant sun, hydro plays a key part in their renewable energy supply: 98 per cent of their electricity already comes from hydro, wind or nuclear power, so they can afford to eschew fossil fuels. The new ‘non-renewable’ target simply means they can get more nuclear power into the grid, and essentially admits that the Nordic utopian fantasy about wind and solar being our salvation is now done and dusted.

Meanwhile, in Germany during the last winter, one town was forced to tear down the local wind farm and dig it up to get to the precious coal beneath. A more entertaining and apt metaphor is hard to find.

In an article headlined, ‘The perils of net zero coercion’, the UK Telegraph this week reported that, ‘Sweeping bans to cut greenhouse emissions in Europe is leading to widespread public backlash,’ and that, ‘Climate coercion is a very bad way to cut greenhouse gas emissions in Western democracies’.

A day earlier, the Telegraph had also warned that, ‘Germany is headed for a political meltdown. Olaf Scholz faces a reckoning as Germans resist his “Green dictatorship” of mandatory heat pumps and unaffordable technologies.’

This week, even the BBC had to admit that Britain is not capable of meeting its own net-zero targets. According to the latest report by the bed-wetting Climate Change Committee, there is a ‘worrying tendency’ of UK government ministers to avoid embracing the next stage of net zero. What a surprise! ‘The UK has lost its clear global leadership position on climate action,’ the report’s authors lament. ‘We are no longer COP President; no longer a member of the EU negotiating bloc…. We have backtracked on fossil fuel commitments.… And we have been slow to react to the US Inflation Reduction Act and the EU’s proposed Green Deal Industrial Plan, which are now a strong pull for green investment away from the UK.’

Last week Britain also abandoned its proposed ‘green hydrogen levy’ on households, which, according to the Guardian, ‘[signals] a possible U-turn as households struggle with high inflation and this week’s shock interest rate rise’.

Craig Mackinlay MP, chairman of the parliamentary Net Zero Scrutiny Group, said: ‘The cancellation of the proposed £118 Hydrogen Tax on household energy bills is hugely welcome and I hope is the start of a common sense journey for the government on energy policy…. When the laudable ambition of net zero hits the reality of cost and significant changes to the way we live, the public are understandably turned off.’ Meanwhile, we also learn that EVs are looking increasingly dubious. That same UK Climate Change Committee report says that ‘plug-in hybrids have performed up to five times worse than expected’. China, too, is reportedly ‘discarding fields of EVs, leaving them to rot’.

Yet here in far-away Australia, our climate warrior-in-chief Chris Bowen blithely places his faith for our energy future in green hydrogen and EVs convinced that Australia can survive without our fossil fuel energy advantage. Is he deaf? Blind? Can he not read a foreign newspaper? Does he not have any advisers who are actually aware of the shift in public opinion occurring in places once famed for their green ideology but now crippled by soaring inflation and out-of-control cost of living?

Australia’s ‘cultural cringe’ came to an end. How long before the majority of Aussies wake up to our ‘climate cringe’ – and the fact that Chris Bowen’s net zero/renewables fad is about as fashionable overseas as a pair of velvet flares?