Thirty three years ago, on this day, December 24, 1990, a letter appears in the Canberra Times…
Renewable energy
YOUR excellent report from Washington, DC, presenting evidence that renewable energy could substitute for coal, oil and gas in the 21st century (CT, December 17) needs to be supplemented with some information about the Australian situation… Commonwealth support for renewable energy has been very weak.
Canberra Times 24th December 1990
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/122332903/13000347
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 355ppm. As of 2023 it is 421ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that everyone was talking about moving away from fossil fuels moving towards renewables. Would it be possible? Over what time-scale? etcetera
Except when they weren’t and they were trying to sit on things, which is what the Australian government eventually took to doing.
What I think we can learn from this
The Politics of technology R&D – what gets funded, what doesn’t, by who, with what end-goals is always really interesting, well usually.
The crucial thing is this is Australia which could have been ahead of the game on wind power solar geothermal hydrogen you name it. But the problem was we had so much damn coal and natural gas, and the people who owned those resources also, in effect, owned the state and the policymaking process and have won all the big battles.
What happened next is we didn’t do that “clean energy transition.” We may yet in the future who knows, but it will be too little too late, by definition.
The age of consequences is beginning and the dildo of consequences never arrives lubed.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs