Green Disasters
Viv Forbes
Recent news on energy

Newton’s 3rd law of motion, if applied to bureaucracy, would state: “Whenever politicians attempt to force change on a market, the long-term results will be equal and opposite to those intended”.

This law explains the never-ending Green energy policy disasters.

Greens have long pretended to be guardians of wild natural places, but their legislative promotion of ethanol biofuel has resulted in massive clearance of tropical forests for palm oil, sugar cane and soy beans. Their policies have also managed to covert cheap food into expensive motor fuel and degraded land devoted to bush, pastures or crops into mono-cultures of corn for bio-fuel. This has wasted water, increased world hunger and corrupted the political process for no climate benefits.

Greens also pretend to be protectors of wildlife and habitat but their force-feeding of wind power has uglified wild places and disturbed peaceful neighbourhoods with noisy windmills and networks of access roads and transmission lines. These whirling bird-choppers kill thousands of raptors and bats without attracting the penalties which would be applied heavily to any other energy producers; all this damage to produce trivial amounts of intermittent, expensive and blackout-prone electricity supplies.

Greens have long waged a propaganda war on coal, but their parallel war on nuclear power and the predictably intermittent performance of wind/solar energy has forced power generators to turn to hydrocarbon gases to back up green power. But Greens have also made war on shale-gas fracking, which has left some countries (eg Germany) with no option but to return to reliable, sensibly-priced coal, or increase their usage of Russian gas and French nuclear power. Their war on coal has lifted world coal usage to a 44-year high.

Greens also say they support renewable energy, but they oppose any expansion of hydro-power, which is usually the best renewable energy option. For example, they scuppered the Gordon-below-Franklin hydroelectric project, which would have given Tasmania everlasting cheap green electricity. They never mention the Basslink undersea cable going to Loy Yang power station in Victoria, which enables Tasmania to import coal-powered electricity from the mainland.

Robbie Burns warned us over 200 years ago:

"The best laid schemes of Mice and Men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!"



habitat21 / Jun 14

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