Good point Hasbeen, and guess what.
Back in 1978 I worked on the final stages of construction of Woodlawn Mine, Tarago NSW. We knew from the outset the mine only had a working life of around 15 years, but with 86% copper assays (compared to 2% at Queenstown, Tas.) It was thought well worth it.
Google Woodlawn mine, and see what it's being used for now.

I think you’re onto something Hasbeen – just a minor fix required. There is a difference between this:

http://tinyurl.com/24r4nkv

and this:

http://tinyurl.com/2ewcqg9

Although imo, the latter is not really the answer as you suggest.

Happy New Year

Got to agree there bonmot, the first one is a thing of beauty, the second is just a thing.

Saw about 60 of those things slowly turning in the distant landscape to the left of Lake George heading south into Canberra last week - do you know if they help power Queanbeyan/ACT, or does it all go into the national grid?

Got to give it to the old world charm of windmills though, helping mill grain and (some) at the same time pumping water away from a sinking country.

Hasbeen,

I love it. But I've got a better idea.

We could all retire from productive work and live off the gov't. They print the money after all. Why do we need private enterprise anyway? Only to steal it from us of course!!

The first step would be to tear out the cities to allow the natural streams and rivers to run. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11390
This would also avoid any disruption to the migrating black ant. And birds would not need to be offended by the sight of our cities.

And technology? We could bin all that useless nonsense. We could go back to the 17th century windmills, and grow our own food.

Eventually we could, by superior moral endeavour, regress as a species to hunter gatherers. From there, it would be simple enough, for humans to become extinct, and allow the earth to go back to its NATURAL, and morally superior, state.

Or on the other hand, we could cause the future extinction by robbing future generations of valuable -irreplaceable- resources, and degrading their future environment to the point where once again survival becomes ugly, brutish and short.