I rarely watch Q+A, the ABC panel discussion program, but I did on Monday last week, and was highly impressed with a young Year 11 student by the name of Will Shackel, who is an articulate and ardent supporter of nuclear energy.
Will was on a panel that included federal energy minister, Chris Bowen; the opposition spokesman; and several others. I must say his presentation was by far the best, and was appreciated by the significantly young audience in attendance. Bowen’s attempt to say it would cost $387 billion to put 71 small reactors into our old coal-powered power stations was shown to be an own goal, as the government’s current plan to rewire Australia and ensure that by 2030 we would have 82 per cent renewable energy would (on their own figures) cost $1.5 trillion, i.e., four times as much.
Interestingly, the audience online poll of more than 11,000 respondents indicated 59 per cent favoured giving nuclear a go; only 34 per cent were against, with 7 per cent undecided. This from a largely left-leaning younger audience.
The government needs to have a good rethink about its energy policy, and Peter Dutton should really go hard on this, as I see it as his main chance of gaining votes amongst our younger voters.
Our disaster-prone energy minister, meantime, has made public plans to build numerous wind farms off the NSW Central, Mid North, and Wollongong coasts that would be right in the way of our annual whale migration. Experience in Europe and off the east coast of the US has shown that these wind farms have disastrous effects on whales, especially mothers and their young calves. In the US, there are only 386 of the endangered North Atlantic whales left alive as a result. The towers, as big as the Eiffel Tower, have had a similar effect on dolphins and other aquatic animals.
On land, former Greens leader (and a real environmentalist) Bob Brown has been horrified at the destruction to animal and bird life a recent development of wind turbines has caused in northern Tasmania, where eight rare wedge-tailed eagles have been killed so far, as well as numerous other birds. As well, much ground habitat for native animals such as koalas has been destroyed throughout Australia to make way for these towers.
One thing I always respected and indeed admired Shane Rattenbury for was his time at Greenpeace saving whales. Many of those whales Shane helped save are now, together with their offspring, under threat of destruction from these next-to-useless (in terms of creating energy), environmentally destructive, and ugly wind turbines.
Whilst solar has an important part to play, these wind farms are proving to be a disaster, and I think the federal government would be wise to put a moratorium on any further development and rollout of them in Australia. I would hope Shane would agree on this, because if he doesn’t, he would be betraying the honourable stand he took 15 to 20 years ago with Greenpeace in saving the whales.
