Dear All
The following letter, published in today’s Age, is the first the letters editor has accepted from me after 15 rejections. The letter is preceded by three supporting replacement of Hazelwood with renewable energy, including one from the CEO, Environment Victoria calling for such replacement by the end of 2012.
Des Moore
In praise of coal
letter published in The Age, 12 July 2010
You report the federal government as “unlikely” to consider an interim price on carbon emissions but being asked to consider assisting the payout of the Hazelwood [coal-fired power plant] (“Power cut for big polluter”, July 10).
[Prime Minister] Gillard has promulgated a “community consensus” before acting to reduce CO2 emissions to deter fossil fuel usage. Apart from covering an emissions trading scheme, such a consensus must also surely be required for other reducing usage measures, such a those proposed by the Brumby government.
Also relevant is that the dangerous warming thesis believers [continually] ignore the many errors and manipulations of temperature data identified in reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and [some] other analysts. Any community consensus to such analyses requires [full] explanations of why, over the last dozen years, global temperatures have been flat when the IPCC’s supposed temperature driving force (human activity) has increased.
Meantime, [Prime Minister] Gillard should accept that, to sustain growth, investment in new coal-fired power stations must not be inhibited by unproven theories advocating reduced usage of our most valuable asset, coal.
Des Moore
Director, Institute for Private Enterprise
South Yarra.