<
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/25/fury-road-a-forlorn-hope-that-for-once-australia-would-choose-the-hard-path-on-climate>
"There is an element of time travel to driving a road you once knew well. The
route along the Olympic Highway, which turns off the Hume Freeway just north of
Albury and runs through Wagga Wagga to Cowra and then becomes a series of
single-lane roads all the way to Cassilis, is etched into the back of my mind.
We drove it once or twice a year to see my grandparents. I remember when the
McDonald’s opened at Cowra – an exciting day for my parents, because Cowra was
exactly the halfway point of our drive and an ideal spot for lunch. But it was
a devastating day for my sister and me, who had previously been able to wrangle
two fast food stops (one at Wagga, before 10.30am to get the breakfast menu,
and a second at Wellington for a fried afternoon tea).
It has been 10 years. For some towns – The Rock, Henty, Junee – it could still
be 1993. Others, like Young, have boomed. But most turns look the same.
The biggest difference is the solar and windfarms. Much of the route is in the
Central-West Orana renewable energy zone, and there are renewable energy
developments every few hours. I notice them because they weren’t there last
time. It’s like seeing an old friend with a moustache. You never like it at
first.
It is easy, driving through the development zones, to see why locals are angry.
It’s like someone in the city seeing a new block of apartments where a heritage
pub once stood; the kind of change that gets a petition circulating.
But – and I’ll be hung, drawn and quartered for this – most areas that I drive
through where windfarms have been built were never highly productive. It’s
predominantly light country, sheep grazing country. Still is, sheep not being
bothered by turbines and, according to some case studies, actually thriving
under the shelter of solar panels. In the 90s half the ridges that now host
turbines were purple from Paterson’s Curse. The valleys are productive but the
ridges were cleared some time before 1950 and lost all their topsoil within a
decade. Only rabbits made a living up there.
It’s hard to begrudge a farmer for accepting the minimum fee of $40,000 a
turbine a year – it may be the only thing saving the farm."
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
