The following is from some people who actually know what they're talking about. I'm also a fan of nuclear power - but may just be coming around to the idea of 100% renewables. Off-river closed-loop pumped hydro creates HUGE opportunities for storage - and Australia's topography has been mapped and we have over 300 TIMES the potential we need. Choose the best third of a percent, build it out, and we can have 100% renewable electricity day and night without fossil fuels or alienating our trading partners.

"The Snowy Mountains have large numbers of excellent sites of all sizes, located not far from the Snowy 2.0 scheme. If we built reservoirs at the three largest, we’d have double the storage capacity we’d need to support a 100% Australian renewable energy system when everything is electrified and there are no fossil fuels. That’s because the amount of storage needed to support a clean grid is actually quite modest."

https://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/2022/11/11/batteries-of-gravity-and-water-we-found-1500-new-pumped-hydro-sites-next-to-existing-reservoirs/

Vast seaweed and shellfish farms can feed the world, provide all the petrochemicals and feedstocks we need for renewable plastics, proteins, concrete and other industries as well, and sequester all the carbon we need to this century.
https://inletkeeper.org/2020/12/08/regenerative-ocean-farming/
https://theconversation.com/how-farming-giant-seaweed-can-feed-fish-and-fix-the-climate-81761

We need energy.

The way we produced it in the past caused excess contamination of air and land and water.
Today we need to minimise this contamination, to keep the planet 'clean' for our continued use.
Making an instant change to a better way of power generation is not practical.
So we proceed slowly, trying to keep a sensible balance between what is ideal and what we can do.

There is a practical limit to how many people the planet can accommodate.
Providing more and more power for more and more people cannot continue indefinitely.
Curbing population growth must be part of a successful change to clean energy?
Limiting population growth seems to be the far more difficult challenge?

Our ultimate goal is to provide most of our power needs from naturally occurring sources?
The power of the sun, and the wind and wave which result from that?
Argument against such a plan is using up valuable time, even though people must be able to express their views.
Is it time to get real, stop the shilly-shally, and get on with the changes?

Even if these are painful in the short term?

Priests, ministers, pastors, rabbis, imams, nuns,are all entitled to personal opinions on anything and everything. Religious institutions are not entitled to get political.

Can religion really be separated from politics?

We live in a society where freedom of thought, conscience
and belief exists.
We have sermons preached from pulpits that influence members.
And the list goes on. Surely the interests of religion and
country are inter-related?

Ipso,
"Curbing population growth must be part of a successful change to clean energy?"

I think that's back to front. Let’s not campaign for population reduction but for clean energy, clean water, good food and education in developing countries. Especially educating and empowering girls. Do that, and the Demographic Transition will take care of population growth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

Then Technology (the T in I=PAT) will fix climate change - IF we start early enough. Renewables and nuclear can give us all the energy we need. And we can feed the world all the seafood we want if we grow giant seaweed and shellfish farms able to provide all the food and protein we could need for many *times* today's population.

Religion has been tainted by politics because some members of the clergy have been trying to regain significance with people who are just not interested. Christianity, at least, has no place in politics.

"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's". With politics being the dirty business it is, Christianity can provide solace and escape.

Bending Christianity to suit the impersonal skulduggery and corruption of politics in post-Christian Australia to appear 'relevant' - by the church hierarchy, who are now mere bureaucrats - is disastrous and will drive more people than ever away from organised Christianity.