What utter twaddle that the RET drove u the price of electricity ...
or caused massive loss of Australian industry ..

prices rose dramatically because of incompetent demand forecasts .. leading to massive expenditure of billion on the DISTRIBUTION SYSYTEM (read poles, wires, substations etc) at a time when electricity demand was actually falling

this was actively encouraged by higher payments to electricity companies as they increased their asset value

one could expect a Senator on a cushy salary and with the advantage of research assistants to at least be aware of the verifiable facts before he writes utterly factually incorrect drivel ..

<< Luddy old mate, where you think you're jumping on a sustainability band wagon, what you are really doing is jumping from the old frying pan into the fire. >>

Hazza, you are playing down all the different types of renewable energy. Oh, except hydro.

Well, they ain’t easy! There’s no easy solutions here, to match the energy produced by fossil fuels, at anywhere near the same costs.

But that’s no excuse for not doing it.

It is just crackers to continue blundering forth with an economy and society that it utterly addicted to and dependent on fossil fuels.

We have surely got to make every attempt to develop alternatives. Many other countries are doing it. Australia is losing out terribly in not keeping up with this trend.

And its not just about finding alternative energy sources, its about stabilising our population and overall energy demand, and becoming a whole lot more efficient with our energy usage.

Peter Lang, your first link tells us how fossil fuels have facilitated the development of human societies, technological advances and improvements in standard of living.

That’s all good. But it tells us nothing about what will happen if we just continue on the same path.

The consumption rate of oil and other fossil fuels continues to rapidly increase, but of course the resources are finite.

Obviously there is a critical problem there.

Your second link gives us this piece of wisdom: ‘Renewable energy cannot sustain a consumer society’… which is of course completely wrong!

We will continue to consume for as long as we exist, but we will not always have non-renewable energy sources.

Your third link takes us to ‘sustainable nuclear’ energy.

Well, nuclear energy may or may not be a wise part of the energy mix that takes us away from our fossil fuel addiction, but it certainly isn’t the be-all and end-all.

So Peter, what would you have us do?

Would you have us just continue to base our society on fossil fuels as it is now until we are absolutely forced to find alternatives?

Would you promote nuclear energy with great fervour, but not any other alternative energy sources?

I am just trying to understand exactly what your argument is here.

Quote; "At last the government is seriously considering unwinding some of the massive subsidies to renewable energy."

we will know they are serious when the mining industry loses the massive subsidies it received .. like the diesel fuel rebate

and when there is a sensible relationship between mining profits and taxes paid ...

too little .. too late .. the 'boom' and super-profits are over

Luddy I have no objection to trying to find some useful alternate energy, but to my mind "It is just crackers" to deploy generation technologies that are simply wasteful of fossil energy & or materials.

Using existing energy & materials to deploy systems that use more than they save is simply a sop to some peoples conscience, & a totally inefficient one at that.

The only thing to do is, as you say, to conserve as much as reasonably possible. This means not deploy systems that are not work ready, as the employment advisors say.

The mature action is not to do something, anything, just to be seen doing. It is to do nothing, nothing at all, until a system worthy of deployment is developed.

We have now wasted tens of billions on windmills. For at least 7 years now, we have known they are totally useless, & are actually detrimental to our & the planets well being.

Let us hope that Abbott has the guts to tell the truth & stop this dreadful waste, rather than attempt to buy a few votes of the "believers", with billions more dollars of tax payer money.

Hazza I don’t understand why you say windmills are useless.

Hey, no alternative energy source is going to be easy, or as cheap as fossil fuels. If it was, we’d have completely embraced it by now.

Every alternative energy source out there is more expensive, has a higher EIEO ratio and has its own set of downsides for the environment.

Wind power has its place. I can’t imagine that the various windfarms around the country are doing that badly, or that if they were useless, that they would continue to operate and new ones be built.

What we absolutely need is a system of strong incentives to get our society stuck right into R&D on renewable energy.

What we absolutely do NOT need is what David Leyonhjelm is proposing – ditching the RET and setting the economy free. We need to move in the opposite direction to what Abbott is taking us. We need to keep ARENA: http://arena.gov.au/

We need to make our government far less beholden to the wants of the vested-interest big-business lobby and to start governing properly for the good of the whole country.

We absolutely need to encourage a culture of sustainable energy, and indeed of a sustainable society.