Tocqueville also said democracy would last only until people realised they could vote themselves (or their favoured hobbyhorses) money from the public purse. That would include money for useless renewables.

"Renewables will contribute massively to our economy and create thousands of jobs."

And your evidence for that, Peter? And at what cost?

"Obviously the coal industry will be a major loser. In the Hunter and Latrobe Valleys thousands will be unemployed and regional economies disrupted. While this will be more than balanced by the opportunities made possible by the renewable energy sector..."

How exactly?

Sorry, but you need to do more than rehash Labor press releases.

At least you acknowledge that completely destroying Australian industry would have no impact on "catastrophic global warming". Precisely. So what is the point of destroying Australian industry and jobs? And, by the way, there has been no warming for the past 18 years, let alone "catastrophic global warming". Perhaps you'd like to set a date by which we can all write off the greatest hoax in history if warming doesn't resume and we can get back to doing things that are actually useful.

calwest; You are to be congratulated. It is hard to squeeze as much venom and misinformation into a post as you have managed.
How is the view from your position with your head in the sand?
I hope that you survive for another thirty years or so and see the results of Neocon policies, global warming and peak oil.
If you do, you may wonder why you supported the denialist brigade.
If it is any help, people who just cannot cope with huge impending change to their view of life as they want it are the ones that go into denial.
Good luck.

Congratulations to you, Robert, for another of your fact free comments.

Australia has just over 10 million taxpayers and now eight million on various forms of welfare. Yet climate catastrophists want to spend billions more on utterly useless gestures to "stop global warming", when our total contribution to what warming there has been is only a few thousandths of a degree.

Peter McCloy thinks we should do that "as an example to other [!] major polluters that Australia is a nation of integrity, prepared to pay its share for the sake of the planet." As if China, the US, the EU, India or Russia would EVER consider Australia a role model. But if you're into the "what will the neighbours think?" school of international relations, you'll probably also be into the Magic Pudding school of economics.

Meanwhile, prices go up for petrol, electricity, gas, food, water as a direct result of gesture politics.

Old time labor has had its day and needs to be replaced with pragmatic Labor!

Visionary Lee Kwun Yu, would never sell income earning state owned infrastructure, which is just dumb?

And were he running this place with its population numbers and resources, would never sell the farm nor export commodities which hadn't been value added!

Labor is committed to this and that, but nowhere in that ultra unaffordable pipe dream is a how to?

We should be embracing even cheaper than coal carbon free ALTERNATIVE energies, which for starters would allow us to make the cheapest easiest to sell aluminium in the world; and given arc furnaces, a one step direct reduction smelt; the least costly steel in the world!

From which we could build cost competitive ships, subs and cars!

And that takes ticker, given nuclear energy would have to be on the table?

Probably as cheaper than coal, thorium, connected to micro grids and the half price power that would give us; but only if rolled out as publicly owned enterprise!

The coal barons are never going to do it unless a loaded gun is held to their heads!?

Incidentally, we may now have liquid batteries that are the way to affordably store alternative carbon free power?

All we need now is a locally made solar panel capable of collecting as much power as ten conventional panels; and given the scuttlebutt, we may have just that?

Imagine a GM electric car, with the new double range GM batteries inboard and a couple of even more affordable smaller panels on the roof topping them up with around 5000 watts of storable power, when parked?

Instead of your solar laden house providing s recharge, your fully charged car could power the house replete with a power wall; and electric transport options, could have their entire roof space adorned with the new panels?

Incidentally, the conservatives may go to the next election proposing a "carefully worded" referendum on marriage equality?

However the very next election will be a referendum on just that, minus the carefully crafted weasel words!
Rhrosty.

Where do they come from.

Like most authors, & speakers Peter McCloy obviously never did any arithmetic, let alone serious math at school. Like Peter, it seems almost mandatory of writers that they have no understanding of science, but still want to spout about grand plans by idiots & conmen, like Shorten.

If as Peter says, "great parties overturn societies". For god sake, lets squash at birth any with an aspiration to greatness in that case. I guess he admires Hitler, Starlin, & Churchill, all of whom did a great deal of overturning to little benefit of anyone except Starlin.

Peter why don't you go back to ecologically using your rocks. They may do something useful for someone, where as your love affair with alternate power will kill millions, for the benefit of just a few conmen.

Oh & a 12 month remedial course in math just may allow you to understand the impossibility of Labours grand folly, or is it con trick, with wind.

Hi Has, as usual you seem to think that the only alternatives are wind power or solar panels?

As usual in your haste to bag the renewables, you simply ignore solar thermal, which if done on a large enough scale more than competes with coal both in roll out costs and as a base load option!

Examples of just that can be found California and Arizona, done by private energy companies and able to match coal as base load options due to the use of heat retaining thorium and fluoride salts.

Which give these already built facilities the ability to retain base load heat for up to seven sunless days!

Which in some of our deserts, would be the sum total of our cloudy sun free days.

Read, Thorium cheaper than coal. Goggle it.

Which by the way, if connected to microgrids, will provide industrial power for at least half what the price gouging companies charge now!

And just what we need to allow Oz to more than successfully compete with nations that have higher energy costs than we could, and even higher average salaries, i.e., Japan and Germany.

Finally, we could more than halve our dometic power bill/double the discretionary spend, by adopting locally manufactured biogas and used in digestors to create usable methane.

Which after scrubbing can be used in the Aussie invented ceramic fuel cells to provide the world's cheapest local domestic energy, thanks to an energy coefficient of a whopping great 80%!

Incidentally the exhaust product of the above combination is mostly pristine water vapor!

Every western style economy rests on just two support pillars, energy and capital!

The world's cheapest and cleanest genuinely green energy, would put the welcome mat out for all the energy dependant high tech companies, which would more than double if the roll out were accompanied by genuine tax reform that made us the lowest taxing economy in the world as well!

And possible as we do in successful business, by essentially replacing margins with volume, as the tax collection model, so to speak!
Cheers Rhrosty.