Water Water everywhere, only coal to drink

It seems to me quite ironic that, just days after the approval of yet another coal mine for the Hunter region (Anvill Hill, NSW) the area is the sad recipient of a massive deluge and flood, with tragic loss of life and huge property damage to many households, farms and small businesses. I doubt if anyone could direct link the winds and record downpours of this storm to Climate Change, however, extreme weather such as was experienced this weekend is a major predicted outcome of Climate Change, which is, we are told by scientists, being driven by the burning of fossil fuels, in particular, coal and oil.

Whether this particular storm was more intense due to Climate Change is not the real question. The insurance industry has the statistics, and, overall, claims from storm damage are increasing globally, and so extremes of weather are occurring more often and with more intensity. And so we must ask ourselves whether coal mining and burning coal is something we should be continuing to do.

Our economy depends on electricity, and yes, that’s what I am using to write and send this post, make that coffee, to kick start the day, and have a warm shower. Life would be a bit drab without that wonderful stuff. But why coal to produce it? We are using a product that drives an antique industry (antique being defined as something over 100 years). As creative mammals on this planet, we now have an IT and cell phone industry that I for one find amazing. Yet our fossil fuel driven energy production industry is a dinosaur, a linear and, at times, an environmentally damaging industry. I’m not using a typewriter, or a quill pen to write this. I’m using a silicon based system that evolved over the past 20 years.

Actually, the technology for clean energy production, and here I mean wind, solar, and geothermal, is at the stage of the early PC, and experience in many other countries has shown that green energy production is now able to replace 20-30% of our current energy production methods. The brick-wall is simply the resistance to change and the lack of motivation to invest in new infrastructure. Perhaps the floods this weekend may motivate a few more people into thinking about overcoming that resistance.