“New kinds of Power to the People” double page spread from Fri 20 April is disappointing. Much space is spent on Murdoch press type mantra that it’s absolutely NOT possible to get by without coal and CCS will fix it, don’t you worry about that. Nuclear gets a good rap, of course, along with age old reservations that Australia is big and public opinion will oppose nukes, which need to be located on coastal sites(how about Wonthaggi desal site?!?), because of big demand for cooling water. Despite much reporting elsewhere, renewables suffered usual criticism of being intermittent, ignoring studies that large scale wind and solar are proven predictable, so that reduced output from other sources can be scheduled as needed.

Needless to say, nobody ever mentions that feasibility of our future energy options is no longer in the hands of engineers or even politicians but abrogated to the teeth and claws of the finance industry, celebrity hedge fund jokers, merchant and trading bank illusionists, managed superannuation fund not managers of automated share trading systems and lowest tax, smallest government advocates of free market economics, who are now too broke to reverse any deregulation.

>read TheAge>