Roundup - New Catallaxy

The New Energy Narrative

It’s Time for a new narrative, a new Energy Story. The game has changed, not officially and not among the True Believers but every month it will get clearer to anyone who bothers to check. We are in damage control. The exit from coal, gas and oil has just about run its course.

That is official among the developing nations of the world while in Australia, Europe and the US the old narrative will be propped up by assorted vested interests for some time to come. According to the official narrative wind and solar power are clean and cheap and the flight from coal is irreversible.

To the contrary, the unreliable energy from wind and solar factories is not clean. Look at the trail of environmental and human damage from the beginning to the end of the life of batteries, turbines and solar panels. It is not cheap, it is not sustainable and it is not renewable when you consider the non-renewable resources used to produce it.

The new narrative recognizes that fossil fuels have enabled people in the modern world to live lives of ease and comfort that were inconceivable for the masses in the past. In a generation, a billion people were lifted out of grinding poverty.

And we will recognise the indispensable role of the thousands of products of the petrochemical industry that we use practically every minute of the day from putting on our makeup and cleaning our teeth to undergoing medical treatments in hospital.

Wind-watching

This morning at 6.40 the wind was blowing at CP 17% across the NEM and delivering 9% of demand. That CP is a bit more than half the average (29%.)

SA, the wind-leading state, was doing better than the rest with CP 50% and exporting 20% the power generated in the state. Still, 35% of the generation came from gas and without gas there was no spare power to export.

Victoria is the leader in total installed capacity and there the wind was blowing at CP 5% to deliver 5% of demand. 20% of demand was sourced from SA, Tasmania and Queensland via NSW. Don’t blow up your coal stations Dan!

People in the bush are revolting

Across the nation, dozens of communities in the path of major transmission lines and wind and solar developments are fighting back using every avenue they can find to save their surroundings. Watch this site for reports on developments in this contest.

The Menzies Research Institute is hosting a webinar forum on the protests from rural communities faced with the wreck and ruin inflicted by wind and solar factories and the transmission lines associated with them. Register here. The date is 15 December at 6.00 Sydney time.

The saved generations

Driving across the Sydney harbour bridge recently my Chinese friend asked who designed the Aboriginal flag that now flies alongside the Australian flag. Investigation revealed that it was designed in 1971 by Harold Thomas, a Luritja man from central Australia, who identified himself as a member of the stolen generations. He had recently graduated with honours from the South Australian School of Art.

We know that there were no stolen generations and this identity was applied to an elastic figure in the order of 10 to 30+% of young people who were taken into care. We know that many of these young people became very successful, think of some prominent agitators in the grievance industry.

Here is a thought, what about a collection of short biographies of “stolen people” to run in a series, released daily in the runup to the vote on the Voice?

Will Cat readers contribute by providing names in the comments. Don’t be repetitive, the prominent ones will be identified by many people and they will soon be listed, so search further afield. They don’t need to be great and famous and many of them may be pleased to be listed, perhaps anonymously, to correct the mythology.

There was a young lady in the Commonwealth service who achieved some minutes of fame a few years ago by going public to say she was fed up with the way people like herself were getting preferential treatment on the basis of next to no Aboriginal ancestry and no social disadvantage in growing up.

A list from Wikipedia

Gordon Briscoe, Doctor of Indigenous History, Order of Australia
Deborah Cheetham, Aboriginal soprano, actor, composer and playwright
Katherine Mary Clutterbuck (Sister Kate)
Ken Colbung, political activist and leader
Ningali Cullen (deceased), co-chair of the National Sorry Day Committee
Belinda Dann, born as Quinlyn Warrakoo, forced name change to Belinda Boyd, deceased at 107 years of age making her the longest-lived member of the stolen generation
Polly Farmer, Australian rules footballer
Lorna Fejo, the Warumungu woman named by Kevin Rudd, in his Apology to the Stolen Generations in 2008
Ruby Hunter, musician
May O’Brien, WA educator and author
Lowitja O’Donoghue, AC, CBE, DSG, nurse, public administrator and Indigenous rights activist
Doris Pilkington Garimara, author of Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence
Bob Randall, Indigenous Australian of the Year
Aunty Isabel Reid (born 1932), elder and advocate for the Stolen Generation; NSW State Recipient of Senior Australian of the Year 2021; oldest living survivor of those forcibly removed under the Aborigines Protection Act 1909 (NSW), having been sent to the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls^[101] Minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, paid homage to her on 13 February 2021, the 13th anniversary of the Apology.^[102]
Rob Riley (deceased), CEO of the Aboriginal Legal Service 1990–1995, author of Telling Our Story which instigated the National Inquiry into Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families
Archie Roach, musician