Yes let's keep using coal and oil to power our dream world. Even if we cause catastrophic climate change, pollute the air, denude the fertile soil to get at the minerals, cause death and ill health for millions, what does it matter as long as we live the NeoCon dream of a constantly expanding economy and population who will all eventually become extinct as will their mega cars, mega houses and way of life.
After all without an economy what is the point of having a clean green way of life?
Who is going to be in the top 1% if there is no one to lord it over?

Sooner or later, the penny will drop and all the anti nukes will realize that if they want base load power at a cheap price, it will have to be nuclear, not the renewables that are available now and into the foreseeable future.

The Labor Party will never learn: still spruiking the same old rubbish that got them dumped. Not satisfied with already too-high power prices, thanks to the need for taxpayers to subsidize inefficent windmills, they want more of the insightly things, a 50% reliability on renewables, and a new, you beaut carbon carbon tax which, among other imposts, will put an extra $1,500 on the price of a car.

Every time Shorten opens his mouth, he proves that he and his mob are not fit for office; and this is bad for Australia, given the not at all comforting attidudes and arrogance of the government.

More research and basic intelligence would inform this, I believe, broken record "expert"; that one doesn't need 19th century blast furnaces to make steel!

[An X being an unknown quantity and a spurt merely a great big drip under extreme pressure.]

When all that is needed is vastly superior single step direct reduction in electric arc furnaces, which by the way can be powered by cheaper than coal thorium, which by the way is a carbon free alternative to coal; or a super scenic coal mine!
Incidentally you can't eat coal!

The addition of energy loss reduction microgrids, would allow us to reduce industrial energy prices by at least half ;and indeed enable the lowest carbon creating steel production in the world!

Ditto aluminum and light metals smelting!

We may not be better off with so called renewables, or even save the world, let alone our going to hell in a handbasket economy; but the answer is yes, yes, yes with, I'll have what she's having, alternatives!

Which just has to include endlessly sustainable biogas production and utilising that homemade gas in household ceramic fuel cells to produce carbon neutral power.

And the lowest costing energy in the world, given there's no transmission/distribution losses to account for; plus the combination provides energy saving free hot water, and also produces an 80% energy coefficient; the best in the world!?

Wind farms have a place where the wind is super reliable, which is probably in the roaring forties?

And a better top up substitute for Tassie than taking more expensive coal fired energy from Victoria?
Rhrosty.

Johns: Can you build a wind turbine, or start a wind turbine, without fossil fuels? The answer is no and no, you cannot.

And of course, once you start a wind turbine, can you rely on that contraption to go on producing continuous reliable power output, without fossil fuels? Again, the answer is no, as you require fossil-fuel-powered backup for when the wind don’t blow -- or for when the sun don’t shine in the case of solar. Nuclear power is a higher cost alternative to coal-fired power as backup

Gary. The 'uncosted' benefit that is never included when factoring the economics of coal generated electricity is the released CO2 into the atmosphere.

With the increasing use of this form of energy production in Germany, India and China, with luck we should eventually reach 700 or 800 ppm atmospheric levels, close to the optimum concentrations for the benefit of our biosphere. Goodby deserts and vast food production.