Intolerable transport failure

WHAT is our Transport Minister implementing to combat carbon emissions and reduce traffic congestion? Our public transport is dysfunctional. It’s a disgrace that with some of the world’s best vessels and boatbuilders and a safe harbour, we still don’t have a ferry service from Bellerive, Howrah and Lindisfarne to link Hobart’s CBD. A proposed light rail system seems to have dwindled into someone’s pipe dream and the lack of statewide transport linking North-West, North and South is difficult to understand.

It seems we had more efficient transport in the past with the Tasman Limited. I’d hoped to travel return coach, HobartLaunceston, for work on Monday, only to discover there is no longer a 5.30pm return bus service to Hobart on Mondays. Tasmania’s woeful lack of vision and insight into transport cannot be tolerated.

J. Wright Opossum Bay

Action must start

THAT our politicians talk of adaptation and resilience to climate change indicates they fail to understand or are in denial of the mechanisms of human-caused global warming. It is not feasible to adapt to the moving target of continually rising temperatures and their consequences when their underlying cause of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas is not addressed. Encouraging use of natural gas instead of coal may have benefited the Earth’s climate if done 40 or more years ago. Now it will add to the already too high carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will keep rising while coal, oil and natural gas are burned and vegetation is burned faster than it regenerates. The only natural sinks of carbon dioxide are geosequestration and net vegetation growth but these remedies only receive lip-service, not practical action.

The public indicate climate change is the major concern and want real action. We have seen this summer what a 1C temperature increase can contribute. We cannot risk more. Coal, oil and natural gas exploration, production and use need to be rapidly phased out and persons and communities dependent on these occupations need to be given proper incentives and support to move on. The cost of this will be much less than the cost of ongoing disasters. All politicians and candidates have to publicly state their positions so we can elect a genuinely responsive parliament and real climate action can commence. Michael Wadsley

Richmond

The Big Lie

THE Big Lie is that our state and federal governments have a plan to bring down power prices, create jobs, reduce emissions, pump billions in the economy, and all without acting on climate. The state government has no plan but to help foreign-owned UPC trash Robbins Island and 170km of Tasmania with their 90mwide transmission line. UPC will control access to competition from better windfarm projects in the North-West, and ship power to the highest bidder, with profits going offshore. Infrastructure built, the only jobs will be a few blokes spraying herbicide on 15 square kilometres of wilderness. Sorry, tourists! Tough luck, devils!

Tasmanians are paying millions for a PR exercise and fake economic modelling. We’ll lose while UPC profits, and state and federal pollies claim they’re doing something about global warming. Tasmanians are being conned prior to being ripped off. We need a second interconnector and renewables, but the Marinus project and Battery of the Nation is the Big Lie we’re already paying for and will get nothing from.

Ben Marshall Loongana

Mercury’s the best

I AGREE with reader Ray Marsh’s “Well done Mercury, fair and representative of our wide community’s views” declaration (Letters, February 7), apart from when readers express their views against the widely held belief that mankind is causing global climate change. With everything else, the Mercury is fair and representative … the best!

V. Ferri Lenah Valley

Credibility on the line

MR Premier, give Lake Malbena the OK and you lose all credibility for mouthing “climate change”. The proposal is a 20year operation centred around helicopters and will have a massive carbon footprint in a region the UN regards as priceless. George Cresswell

Derwent Park