Ok Geoff, so are you suggesting we just walk away from the hundreds of billions spent on the CSG industry?

I will check that utube vid out when I get time because I still work full time.

Yes, the trick is to invest in money earning enterprise. Currently bulk freight forwarding remains almost the most profitable enterprise on earth.

Whole trains shipped as is would allow loading and unloading to be streamlined as the fastest and least expensive bulk freight transfer in the world, and with a waiting list of anxious forward bookings to keep the money shoveled by the shipload flowing in! Along with the increased two way trade that would ensure?

Rapid rail rolled out initially along the busiest domestic air route, can't help but make money particularly if people are delivered from CBD to CBD in less time and at less cost than competing air.

Then there are projects like a second range crossing which given the current trucking and the savings and time they'd save a well priced toll tunnel can't help but turn a profit. Always providing we didn't invite debt laden profit gouging private players in to cruel the project with their often comparative massive project destroying profit demands!

Of course there'd need to be a business case made and examples of other government investment strategies examined, where one would need look much further afield than near neighbor tiger economy Singapore to understand what in truth is actually possible.

Always providing each project is created minus any political interference or a view that working capital is their personal ATM.

Incidentally, it's almost impossible to lose on energy projects, particularly cheaper than coal projects kept as public projects!
Alan B.

A good article, Don, but referring to the green’s scurrilous lies as “ misuse of language” is far too kind.
The mainstream parties’ support of the climate fraud is almost as bad.
There is no science to show any measurable human effect on climate, so the demonization of “fossil fuels” is baseless, and dishonest

Playing pea'n'thimble with ourselves over how we pay the preposterously huge cost of going renewable is a sideshow. However the financing is done, it can apply to renewables and alternatives equally.

In Germany domestic and small business users subsidize renewables, yet there are still complaints by big business that Germany's competitiveness is under threat. Furthermore, emissions are rising while energy return on energy invested in the massive infrastructure is a unquestioned. It's a convoluted mess, with the need to grow, maintain and use coal-fired infrastructure to deal with intermittency unlikely to recede.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/dossiers/energiewende-effects-power-prices-costs-and-industry (and this is a Green tinged view)

Why should Australia take one step in the German direction without waiting to see the outcome of its massive experiment, and why mark this time without thoroughly investigating the nuclear option?

Luciferase, I don't think we can wait to see what ultimately succeeds
or fails in Germany. All sources of oil are now declining.

Joseph Traintner said that all complex societies fail due to declining
returns on investment, money, energy etc.
In Rome's case it was declining returns on the Spanish silver mines
and the increasing cost of slaves, ie energy.
The seams of silver were getting more difficult and the slaves that
walked the water wheels to pump the water out of the mines were being difficult.
With the decline in the number of slaves food production costs escalated.

We are seeing the early days of declining returns dues to lower
energy ERoEI. It is no co-incidence that the major oil companies are
have declining reserves and increasing costs.

In the US coal fired power stations are switching to natural gas and
five nuclear power stations are being built. Several are closing
due to their age. China is building 20 new nuclear stations I read
but cannot confirm that. Maybe someone knows for sure.

Hi Bazz,

Joseph Tainter, I chased him up. Very, very interesting ideas, I'm trying to apply them to current Indigenous 'problem-solving' or the lack of. He knocked out a paper in 2006:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1476945X0600002X

But it costs big bucks to get the whole thing. This is the Abstract:

"Social complexity and sustainability emerge from successful problem solving, rather than directly from environmental conditions.

"Social complexity develops from problem solving at all scales from local to national and international. Complexity in problem solving is an economic function, and can both support and hinder sustainability.
Sustainability outcomes may take decades or centuries to develop.

"Historical studies reveal three outcomes to long-term change in problem-solving institutions: collapse, resiliency through simplification, or continuity based on growing complexity and increasing energy subsidies.

"The slow development of complexity in problem solving makes its effects difficult to perceive, especially over short time periods. Long-term social sustainability depends on understanding and controlling complexity. New strategies to mitigate or control complexity are offered."

Although not being too bright, I suspect that there are enormous implications from these ideas. One pre-condition that springs to mind is that a society has to be as clear and accurate as possible in analysing and taking into account actual reality, not just some convenient narrative. In terms of Indigenous futures, that suggests a very long road to even begin to grasp what needs to be done.

Fascinating.

Cheers,

Joe