There’s no windmill too big for Chris Bowen, the Don Quixote of Canberra, as mad and erratic as Cervantes could ever have imagined the character.

Even when the most fervent adherents of net zero are finally conceding that the 2030 targets Labor’s Climate Change Minister set are unachievable, Bowen gets back on his horse and goes in search of the next impossible dream.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Australian this week, ahead of the imminent release of Labor’s 2035 carbon emissions reduction targets, Bowen was suitably quixotic.

He gormlessly declared that “ambitious” climate action over the next decade would be the “key determining factor to whether we’re a prosperous economy or not”.

The problem is that Bowen is so myopic that he only sees the upside in that statement.

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