Energy cliches fail test
I CONGRATULATE 15-yearold Tully Bowtell-young on her letter ( TB March 16) about why children took school time off to draw attention to climate change.
Her letter was excellently written and presented but sadly, long on hackneyed, alarmist phrases and short on honest, practical ideas on how we are going to change the climate to where we would like it to be.
As a parent of six, (the youngest named Margaret Mary), I know very well the inexperience of youth cannot be equated to years of adult work and life experience. Would you ask your 15y/o child to take charge of your personal finances, or ask him/her to choose your new home’s colour scheme?
Australia is already becoming invested in renewable technology and one only needs look a short distance from St Margaret Mary’s College to see huge solar farms taking over the local and country landscapes yet at this stage renewables provide only a tiny single-figure per cent of our needs.
We cannot surrender valuable food-producing land to wind and solar farms; therefore vast areas of the inland would become an endless sea of solar panels and wind turbines. This would necessitate forcibly evicting large numbers of rural families running sheep and cattle-grazing businesses, providing food and fibre to the world, to ensure the inner-city coffee machines and aircons are kept running.
Tully says, ”Putting coal and profits before people”, is a mistake?
In fact, for more than seven decades trillions of dollars of “dirty” profits, royalties and taxes, have funded government infrastructure and services, and the comforts and conveniences that have improved the lives of every Aussie, and many foreign citizens too, through trade and the generous foreign aid we donate to less well-off countries.
We will never need to virtue-signal our goodness as the planet-savers of the world. We already are the best country on Earth.
Many asylum seekers certainly know it. A pity not all our citizens appreciate it and teach their kids how good they’ve got it!
Here’s a challenge for Tully’s cohort at St Margaret Mary’s. While ensuring Australia cannot afford to lose what little manufacturing we have left, and to maintain our current living standards, including for our continuing migrant intake, research and prepare a paper that projects Australia’s mw/ hour needs in 2035 and provide the input in mw/hours from each source: coal, gas, diesel, wood, solar, wind, wave, nuclear, and any other source.
In the case of solar and wind, specify the number of solar panels and turbines.
I’m sure many readers will eagerly await the group’s report and the editor will happily publish it.
GEOFF DILLON, Townsville.