<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/fossil-fools-and-climate-change-or-goldilocks-and-the-three-fears/>
"Are you tucked in kids? Nice and comfy? You want a story? Which one? Oh, you
like the ones daddy makes up do you? Well, I haven’t got time tonight but here
is an old story that I might have remembered wrongly …
Once upon a time, the wonderful world we live in was threatened by a great
invisible problem. Concentrations of atmospheric carbon built up and up,
sending gauges deep into the red and setting in place processes that would
continue for a century. After much hand wringing and many, many checks of the
dials and guages to make sure it was as bad as it looked, a call for help went
out.
The bright engineering people who love nothing better than a challenge and who
wanted to leave the world in good shape had a wonderful idea. What if they
could go into the woods and build lots of wind and solar farms and batteries to
replace the coal mines and the coal fired powered stations.
They thought that the world would be a better place, and wasn’t it wonderful
that instead of smelly noisy machines left over from the industrial revolution,
loading up the atmosphere with heat reflecting carbon, we could instead have
wonderful, reliable electric power and in the process make regional areas the
thriving growth hub of australia.
That way all their children, grandchildren and future generations might have a
chance at the good life that Australians have become so accustomed to over many
years. A life built on the hardwork and sacrifice of their parents and
grandparents and which so many around the world also aspired to.
Instead of all the young smart people moving from the country to the city,
young professional families would move to the regions bringing increased levels
of econcomic activity, enthusiasm and new life.
Instead of country people being disadvantaged because there were lower quality
hospitals, less internet, more expensive airfares, lots of crime in the towns
instead of that regional centres even places like Dunedoo that noone had ever
heard of before would become thriving centres of activity. Boarded up shops
would find new tenants and so on.
Of course the conservative old men on the farms used to being the boss because
they were the eldest sons and therefore quite literally born to rule, wouldn’t
necessarily be happy.
Well they aren’t called grumpy old men for no reason. They would be a bit
scared and resist anything that threatened their position of dominance. In this
they were normal, old people had always resisted change. It’s just that there
were so few people left with an interest in regional Australia, that no-one
bothered. You think houses are unaffordable in the city, try buying a farm. And
then if you do, try running it.
So the engineers and their friends with the chequebooks went out into the
country and spoke the message, and at first there was little interest. Many
jokes from the local yokels were made about the dumb ones. After a while
though, as more and more wind farms were built in South Australia, there were
fewer jokes and more talk about dangerous experiments. And indeed it was
dangerous …. to coal fuelled power stations, and several closed quickly."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
