IN the emotionally charged world of green power politics, the real risks to humanity are all too frequently forgotten or hidden, like uncertain energy supplies or the total collapse of a national grid.
Last year Jo Nova, the Australian science writer, told a British audience how to destroy a perfectly good electricity grid in three easy steps. For a hundred years Australia had bountiful and reliable electricity at 10 cents a kilowatt that bought plenty of vegetable production and ambient temperature, she told us. It was clearly time to do something different. That something different – despite the benefit of more energy resources per capita than any place on earth – has resulted in state-wide blackouts, flying squads of diesel generators, and a tripling of wholesale electricity prices in just five years. What do you need to do it? Buckets of State cash, bypassing of the free market and a policy transition to renewables.
You can see her lecture here.
I was reminded of this when I read that ‘green’ Germany now also risks blackouts as it renounces nuclear (by 2022) and coal, and ‘transitions’ to ‘renewables’. You can read about this folly, and imagine the damage this lights-out policy will do to the German economy and standard of living, here.
