Australia's Mineral Resource extraction won't support our lifestyles for much longer. Mining of depleting resources takes ever more expensive energy and resources. Too bad we are not using them wisely. But we have no end of solar and wind energy resource flow, we just need to increase our harvesting and storage capacity.
I hear a double meaning to the slogan "Repower NSW". We need to replace coal and gas with renewable energy sources. We need to compost our fossil government and regrow some proactive nature renewal.
The map shows the target areas centred around Hay, Dubbo and Armidale in NSW.
The Sydney Morning Herald published on 18th February 2018, with a similar map, with the headline of
Solar 'tsunami' coming in Australia as NSW accelerates approvals
Quote from Renew Economy --- The push for renewable energy zones has also been embraced by Transgrid, the operator of the main transmission lines, which has argued that the shift to 100 per cent renewables is perfectly feasible and affordable.
The process of replacing coal & gas is getting underway, and not before time, because global warming is already getting too hot.
Global Methane in our atmosphere continues to rise. A big contributor is no-good for anyone fracking for gas and oil, that governments and corporations pretend to be a "transition fuel". NASA has done global methane emission sums, and we are the culprits.
Article
by Randy MacEwen, President & CEO Ballard Power, Canada.
KPMG recently published its 19th consecutive Global Automotive Executive Survey 2018. The survey concluded, “There will not be a single solitary drivetrain technology: Executives project a similar split by 2040 for Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) (26%), Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs) (25%), ICEs (Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) (25%) and hybrids (24%).” The report also noted, “FCEVs have replaced BEVs as this year’s #1 key trend until 2025.” Yes, you read that correctly – hydrogen fuel cell vehicles top the list as the key trend.
Solutions to the climate challenge are well known, cost effective and available today, but Australia's carbon emissions continue to rise. So says the Australian Climate Council.
Our Australian Government does not want to hear, see, or talk about it, Ostriches don't really try to hide their heads in the sand, but our Australian Government keeps trying to bury itself in Coal.
Massive amounts of water are being stolen from the Darling River System, under the noses of regulators.
Jeremy Buckingham blames inappropriate large scale cotton farming in Queensland, and deep corruption in the National Party.
Numb-Skulls in the NSW government have been asking to build a new coal
fired power station.
We have ongoing global "Earth Systems Disruption" from climate change, energy resource depletion, and threats to water and agriculture. These have already helped cause government breakdowns and human consequences of wars, malnutrition, disease and forced migrations. These are "Human System Disruptions" made worse by failures of recognition and adaptation to Earth System Disruptions. Coal mining and Coal fired power stations are big economic losers to renewable energy, and are dirty polluting technology that we
have to loose now, or loose our own prosperity, health and survival chances in future.
In this study, brown capuchin monkeys became agitated and refused to perform a task when a partner received a superior reward for that same task. From Human sense of fair play
Some confronting metaphors here in this thought-filled article from Nate Hagens and DJ White. The best thing to read before Xmas present comparisons.
Rising GDP is dependent on burning more fossil fuels, which replaces meaningful human work,
with increasingly complex 'energy slave' systems.
Investing in GDP, and more fossil fuels, makes less sense than the giant stone statues built on Easter Island,
that required sacrifice of its last trees. Too many of our remaining jobs are 'make-work'
to pay for the consumer items desired by our status-seeking monkey brains.
As fossil fuels decline, human labor will become necessary for important work again.
Never come between the Queensland government and a basin with lots of buried coal. The Queensland Government has walked over Indigenous rights in its efforts to secure the Wangan and Jagalingou people's country, and to open up the Galilee Basin for the final frontier in a long history of often violent extractivism. The Galilee Basin Development Strategy set out to discount royalties paid by mining companies, streamline land acquisition and fast track planning approvals.
In this age of carbon emissions overshoot and
global warming limits overshoot, at least nine so-called ‘mega mine' proposals have been
slated for the Galilee Basin, including the Alpha Coal project.
Mining the area will destroy too much land and water. It is far too much coal to burn in a world already going experiencing
climate change extremes. Burning this amount of coal is a global survival risk, and of course the Great Barrier Reef will be no more.
What do you expect happens when continued exponential growth depends on a non-renewable resource?
As we go round in political circles in Australia, it seems that the future coming into focus is that of collapse, based on the hard pressed biophysical constraints of our environment.
BHP in alliance with Rio Tinto, provides the
MCA with about 60% of its funding. The MCA claims all successful responsibility for Australia's climate and energy policy failure.
Of course its Australia's Progress lack of progress in climate change action that our Australian Climate Council focuses on.
We have experienced a deep betrayal by our systems of Government and our failures of community responsibility to ourselves to change that.
Despite the worlds most abundant solar and wind resources, Australian government policy has been going
backwards in a "time warp".
Australia coal plants are "non-dispatchable" sources of electricity, that is it they are not capable of being turned on or off at the flick of switch, and are best suited for steady "baseload" output. Coal and Gas are "non-renewable", and also "non-burnable" because of our global climate emergency. The "National Electricity Guarantee" marketing brochure put out as government policy defines coal as "dispatchable" energy. Coal as "dispatchable energy" is a sales marketing promotion gimmick that is very typical of the Minerals Council of Australia.
The Coalition’s new energy plan fails on every dimension: energy,
environment and politics, as described by Ben Eltham. The only winner is Tony
Abbott.
Energy Security Board told to ignore climate lobby groups, and Australian obligations to Paris Climate Treaty. It looks like another attempt to impose coal and gas tyranny on Australia by the Minerals Council of Australia and a few big energy corporations.
Outside the Origin Energy AGM in Sydney, near Martin Place, October 18th 2017, Lock the Gate and Seed Mob, came together for a passionate "No" to Origin Energy Plans for Gas Fracking in Australia's Northern Territory.
The reputation of gas-fracking precedes itself.
Nic Clyde, from Lock the Gate, said that a number of motions concerning climate risks were being put to the Origin AGM, all of which Origin had advised its share holders to vote against. These included
- Origin clearly quantify its risks for stranded assets of fossil fuel interests, because of carbon emission limits for having a safe climate.
- Origin as a energy corporation, and a major energy provider in Australia, needs to publish its plan for transition to net-zero carbon energy systems.
- Origin needs to measure amounts of fugitive emissions from its existing gas operations.
Big changes are happening to energy industry. Jeremy Leggett's visual presentation gives the headlines.
