There is no more perverse policy in Australia than the reckless pursuit of net zero emissions by the year 2050.

At its most basic, this policy involves spending tens of billions of dollars of the taxes you pay to make your electricity much more expensive than it has to be, and less reliable.

We’re told the aim is to contribute to a global effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. This is where the perversity starts: nothing we’ve done in Australia—none of the huge piles of money we’ve spent and continue to spend—has made the slightest difference to global emissions.

They’re rising, not falling. They’re going to continue to rise for many years to come, because the global effort formalised under the Paris Agreement allows some of the world’s largest emitters to keep increasing them. China alone will add two billion tonnes of emissions by 2030 (more than four times Australia’s total annual emissions).

In the past year, the electricity bills received by Australian households have increased by at least 20%. Since the large-scale penetration of renewables began in Australia more than 20 years ago, bills have risen around 300%.

Both Labor and the Coalition are committed to net zero, committed to spending tens of billions of taxpayers’ money every year to make electricity more expensive for households, businesses, and industry.

Some of the biggest energy users in Australia are farmers, and in many cases it’s their land that’s been covered in wind turbines, solar panels, and the transmission lines feeding their intermittent energy to the grid. So, you have to wonder why the so-called party for farmers and rural communities, the Nationals, are committed to net zero as part of the Coalition.

One Nation has never supported net zero. The rest of the world has discovered they can’t power their economies solely with renewables, and many countries are reinvesting in cheaper and more reliable coal, gas and nuclear energy. Many are going back on their Paris targets, which were dubious to begin with.

Not Australia, though. Labor still thinks Australia can run on renewables alone, despite all evidence to the contrary. The Liberals and Nationals have at least woken up to the impossibility and proposed nuclear energy as a way of providing emissions-free power.

In principle, One Nation has no problem with nuclear energy, but we see no immediate need when we have plenty of gas and coal. We do, however, see an immediate need to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and abolish climate change agencies and programs, saving taxpayers at least $30 billion a year and lowering your electricity bills.