Time to choose between coal mines and renewables. Not so hard, you'd think, and most developed countries made a sensible choice a few years ago. Not so Australia, of course. We don't do sensible here.
On Saturday several thousand people turned out on the streets of Sydney to help the state government make that choice. It was exactly twelve months before the next state election.
It's astonishing that this still needs to be done. But the coal industry has enormous financial clout still, the coffers of the major parties are full of dirty coal money, and the Murdoch press is full of dirty coal propaganda. The Sydney Daily Telegraph has published dozens of bizarre coal-lovers' letters recently. Yours truly was obliged to provide their letters column with a 'Reality Check on Energy' as they, to their credit, headed it:
It's almost touching to see the faith of some of your contributors in the coal-fired technology of previous centuries as a solution to the energy challenges of the future. Unfortunately that faith is misplaced.
* During recent hot spells the state's coal-fired power stations suffered a huge amount of downtime due to the heat itself.
* By and large they are unreliable old clunkers at the best of times.
* Building new ones would now be massively more expensive than renewables.
* So-called 'clean coal' was largely a distraction to buy time through false hope. It cannot be done at reasonable cost.
We have the world's best resource of clean, inexpensive, renewable energy, and the know-how to harvest it. With modern batteries and hydro storage schemes, plus some new inter-connectors, we could have the world's most reliable supply too. It's time to say goodbye to a misplaced nostalgia for the dirty old days.
Re the photo below, I asked the girl in front who 'The Drip' was, and why he needed saving. It seems it's a scenic spot near Mudgee, and it's threatened by a coal mine.
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