Rstuart wrote

In that document you can see Denmark's electricity production from
wind has been stable at about 10% since 1990. If that report can be
believed, it was closer to an amazing 61% in 1980.
Unquote

Did you separate out the other renewables ?
I note that in 1990 most of the renewable energy came from the burning
of straw, waste and heat pumps. Wind seemed a very small fraction then.
Even today wind is only part of the renewables in Denmark although
becoming the larger part, but is still around 10%.
I visited Denmark in the 1980s and did not see a wind turbine.
I feel certain that the 61% had nothing to do with wind.

Q&A; “…there are very powerful and influential vested interest groups that can hog-tie the aspirations of any well meaning politician…”

Big Arnie doesn’t appear to be hog-tied. Strongly pressured by powerful vested-interest lobbies yes definitely, but not entirely beholden to them.

California and Australia are essentially the same sort of society with the same sort of pressures from big business and the same demands from the general public.

Rudd has got plenty of room to move.

Examinator; “The public doesn’t want dramatic changes wide ranging reformers always get it in the neck.”

I think that the public would generally be happy with a fair bit of obvious change if it was perceived to be in the right direction…. and if it is good enough for California, with Obama being seen to support it and follow suit for the whole of the US, then the general consensus would surely be that Oz should engage in the same sort of initiatives.

Secondly, the time is very right indeed for large-scale changes, with the financial crisis hitting hard, capitalism being brought into question, and climate change on the top of the agenda.

continued

Bazz; “Which infrastructure do you think will get the go ahead ? Which infrastructure should get the go ahead ?”

Down in your part of the world, I’m not sure, but up here in north Queensland and on the Victoria Hwy in NT and the top section of the Great Northern Hwy in WA for example, the road upgrades seem largely unnecessary. So I’ll keep it general; far less expenditure on huge new roads and far more on renewable energy and on improving transport efficiency – rail, smaller cars, etc.

RobP, rstuart, OK so there might be problems with renewable energy development in OZ compared to more densely populated places like California. But does that mean that we should be just sitting back and letting others lead the way? Shouldn’t we be finding our niche industries for the development of a society that is not based on oil and that is truly sustainable, while being as independent of other countries as possible?

Can I ask you and Hasbeen and indeed anyone, just what you think Rudd should be doing to this end.

Bazz: "Did you separate out the other renewables ?"

No Bazz, I didn't. And on re-reading the document I see wind power is a small proportion of the renewables - even now. The figures I quoted were for the total renewables. Sorry for the misleading info. The document looks like official government stats, and so I would trust it. I just didn't read the detail closely enough.

From the document wind power constitutes just 2.3% of Denmark's total electricity production, or 3% of their electricity consumption.

That leaves two unanswered questions in my mind. What did Denmark use for electricity in 1980 (production jumped 10 fold from 1980 to 1990), and where did Hasbeen get his figures from?

Ludwig: "Can I ask you and Hasbeen and indeed anyone, just what you think Rudd should be doing to this end."

I don't know, Ludwig. But effectively this is a zero sum game - they government has a fixed pot of money it has to spend. Although you don't say it directly, you are effectively arguing that renewables is a better place to spend it, instead of say new port infrastructure, housing stimulus, hospitals or whatever.

You obviously think renewables are the better choice. It doesn't seem so obvious to me. It would help your case considerably if you at least tried to compare what we would get out of investing in renewables versus the others.

rstuart, by way of clarification; I want to see most of the money being spent on unnecessary infrastructure, which seems to amount to many hundreds of millions, be put into sustainability-oriented pursuits.

I certainly don’t want any current expenditure on health, education and numerous other genuine quality of life sectors to be redirected in this manner.

And of course I want to see immigration reduced right down to the bare bones so that expenditure on health and the like actually does translate into the best improvements for us all instead of it largely going towards providing more of the same level of service for ever more people.