At the time of Labor’s election back in 2022, this magazine raised a few eyebrows by suggesting that the brand new cabinet would comprise, in all likelihood, the combined lowest IQ of any Australian government to date. An odd way of measuring a government, perhaps, but as it turns out we were actually understating the case. As we learned this week, the Albanese government is not only uniquely stupid by Australian standards, it is uniquely stupid by even the standards of Cop 29, the uniquely stupid international gathering of climate charlatans, grifters and fools.

When in doubt, it pays to go back to first principles. Here are a few basic facts: one – there is no form of generating reliable baseload power that is free of emissions other than hydropower on a massive scale or nuclear power; two – we are entering a world where energy use is set to soar and without vast amounts of reliable and affordable energy nations will quickly become economic backwaters; three – Australia is a wide, flat, arid continent with low mountains and few lakes; and four – as a nation we are in fact blessed with an abundance of uranium and vast, empty spaces; handy requirements for aspiring nuclear superpowers.

On top of all of this, some political realities should be noted: one – Australia relies and, for the foreseeable future, will continue to rely upon American military might to protect us; and two – communist China is a belligerent totalitarian entity not very far away to our north that is convinced that it will one day be the dominant military force in the world.

Faced with these facts, one would expect a federal government, hopefully comprised of worthy individuals of above-average intelligence, to reach the following conclusions: one – we’d be bonkers not to go nuclear; and two – we’d be bonkers to do anything that drove a wedge between us and our major allies; and three – the malarkey about rising sea levels and a warming planet is not backed up by what common sense people might choose to call ‘the evidence of their own eyes’.

Enter Chris Bowen, taking centre stage at this week’s annual fringe comedy festival known as The Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Or Cop 29 – this one being the 29th such freak show. Taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan (a major fossil-fuel rich nation, of course), it is attended by those who like to jet around the globe in high carbon-emitting private jets lecturing the rest of us about the need to cut excessive and wasteful carbon emissions. Mercifully, this year the pop stars and spectrum-ish Scandinavian schoolgirls have decided to stay away, having found a far more exciting cause to lend their social media profiles to in supporting the murderous terrorists of the Gaza strip.

Still, the sheer idiocy of Mr Bowen’s pronouncements has seen even the climate-obsessed delegates and ‘developing nations’ rent-seekers wonder if the Australian Climate and Energy Czar is a couple of blades short of a wind turbine. Mr Bowen has decided that Australia will not participate in the new global push – which began last year at Cop 28 – to make nuclear power a key focus of net zero commitments. Worse, Mr Bowen has ignored this week’s requests for us to embrace nuclear power from our two key allies, Britain and the United States, with whom we have a shiny, brand-new military alliance built around, er, nuclear-powered submarines. And the justification for this extraordinary bout of mental gymnastics? It’s because there is more sun in Melbourne than in London.

We kid you not.

‘Put simply, London has only 1,633 hours of sunshine in an average year. By comparison, Australia’s least sunny capital city is Melbourne with 2,362…,’ Mr Bowen explained to a bemused world.

To make matters worse, Mr Bowen at the same time as damaging our future economic prospects is busy splashing tens of millions of dollars around to help the usual grifters ‘tackle climate change’.

If it weren’t so serious, it would be comical. But the harsh reality is that the hapless Mr Bowen has thrown a major spanner into the workings of the Aukus defence agreement and at the same time has demonstrated that the Labor party is prepared to sacrifice Australia’s national security and future economic prosperity so that it can adhere to its illogical and untenable climate change ideology.