THERE is a big difference between paying higher electricity, gas and petrol prices and having your whole livelihood destroyed. Livelihood destruction is occurring for many poorer people around the world, as a result of record flooding, droughts and rising sea levels. These people who lose out have not created the problem in the first place ('The dilemma of global warming', Newcastle Herald, 9/11).
Australia may emit only 1 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas but this doesn't morally absolve us from taking action. Australia is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gas per capita in the world. If Australia wants large total emitters to take action, we have to reduce our own emissions.
Australia may not be a large emitter, but Australia is a large facilitator of emissions. Australia is the world's third largest exporter of fossil fuel after Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Russia, through its invasion of Ukraine, has cut off gas and petroleum supplies and caused energy prices to skyrocket. But Russia may have done the planet a favour. Granted, there is a temporary rise in emissions, as the lives of some coal fired power stations are extended, or the stations are recommissioned. But this is expensive and is only temporary. In the longer term, Russia has forced the world to transition to renewables more rapidly.
Imagine if Australia phased out coal and gas exports, Australia could further speed this transition to a cleaner, greener future and slow global warming. Of course, this would mean Australia was obliged to forgo export earnings and lose jobs and profits. Other, less scrupulous and more expensive suppliers would quickly fill the gap left by Australian fossil fuel exporters. But this might be a sacrifice worth making.
Geoff Black, Caves Beach
PEP-11 promises are a gas
TO calibrate my point of view, I say leave it in the ground. Step away from the gas and urgently focus on the deployment of renewable generation, storage, and distribution and new processes to replace legacy fossil applications. However I recall we previously had oodles of gas on the east coast before the Gladstone LNG export game.
We see that the PEP-11 project says "the domestic market [...] is catastrophically short of gas" . Would David Breeze be happy to sell to Australian users the gas at a long term price of, say, $2/GJ or similar? Or would PEP-11 production, entirely reserved for the domestic market, be so constantly overwhelmingly massive so as to flood the domestic market, keeping local prices low?
I guess no, since "the global energy crisis and its associated price rises made PEP-11 [...] all the more commercially viable". Understand that a developed PEP-11 would not fix any local gas supply or price problem. No amount of PEP-11, or even NSW production, would change the global LNG supply (thus price). If your motivation is to have locally made, cheap, endlessly available energy for industry and household use, then go renewable.
Nigel Stace, Charlestown
Winning containers could cost us
WHILE the Port of Newcastle has claimed most shipping containers will go by rail, what form of rail transport delivers to the final destination? What truck driver won't take a shorter trip to the final destination rather than sticking to an allocated number of roads?
Who believes that transport by rail will be as effective and cheap as a same day truck delivery, often over a shorter distance? Who believes the port will say anything it takes to get public approval, but won't define the 15,000 local jobs they say will be created?
Surely 30 pieces of silver can't buy the peaceful environment Newcastle people have finally discovered. Maybe the final decision should be up to Newcastle council.
Carl Stevenson, Dora Creek
Make a flying start on the climate
I'M no scientist, but I only have to Google carbon dioxide to discover it is more dense than the atmosphere. My understanding is it is heavier than air, which tells me it must eventually settle on the surface of the earth and be absorbed; and yet we are told that it is floating around in the atmosphere locking in the heat created by the sun, and yet we hear very little about the effect of aircraft pollution in the global warming scenario.
It seems reasonable that aircraft pollution remains in the atmosphere and is creating a greater barrier to heat returning to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, and yet nothing is being done to limit or reduce the number of aircraft in the atmosphere. In fact we are building and expanding airports and increasing the number of aircraft. In the meantime we are seeing billions of dollars invested in reinventing our power supply, creating overinflated energy costs all in the name of saving the planet.
To believe this is short term pain for long term gain is a joke because not only do the billions of dollars being invested have to be paid back, so long as we continue to increase air traffic getting rid of coal, gas, agricultural emissions and converting to electric vehicles will have very little effect if any on global warming.
Steven Busch, Rathmines
Morrison bio speaks volumes
THE WorldWide Speakers Group (WWSG) has just announced its new celebrity speaker is former Australian prime minister and Member for Cook, Scott Morrison. The promotional biography supplied by WWSG indicates Scott Morrison to be a "Globalization (sic) Mastermind with a 360° world view."
He is apparently a prime minister who with his decisive and rational intellect, successfully steered Australia through COVID and the bushfire and flood disasters as well. The praises of Morrison in his biography included his genuine concern for the safety of all Australians. Upon reading the WWSG bio of Scott Morrison, I thought "gee-wizz", how wrong were we? Many of us had thought Morrison at best arrogant. WWSG predicted Morrison's routine will bring in at least $100,000 a session. I predict his arrival on the WWSG circuit will breathe life back into the single use plastic bag industry.
Barry Swan OAM, Balgownie
Failures point to fundamentals
I WATCHED the whole of Adam Curtis's Russia 1985-1999: Traumazone and concluded that a great attempt at establishing a sociopolitical economic system (Communism) to meet the needs of its people failed eventually through massive corruption, something that a system based largely on meeting everyone's needs could not withstand.
Capitalism, on the other hand, can withstand corruption at gargantuan levels as no matter how impoverished the vast majority of people become, the system can still function as the system isn't trying to meet everyone's basic needs.
Multi-party democracy doesn't suit sometimes. It's nearly always a facade for plutocratic rule, anyway. I find it so sad that a system which put the people to the fore was destroyed, in many ways, by greed.
How the West grovelled in the failure and how since, the West has been dismantling its own social security systems which were needed to counterbalance the achievements in social security by Communist countries.
Louis Shawcross, Hillsborough
SHORT TAKES
I WAS born in Newcastle 74 years ago, so I am a lifetime resident. In recent times I have noticed that the trend-setters of this great city of ours have begun describing it as "Newy" or "Newie". It is and always will be Newcastle; never in my years growing up in this city was it anything else but Newcastle... certainly not Newy or Newie. If you don't have sufficient pride to call it by its real and intended name, I have a suggestion: move. Can you imagine the Newy Knights or the Newie Jets?
Rob Bernasconi, Rankin Park
DENISE Lindus Trummel (Short Takes, 11/11), you can't defend the indefensible. That is, if you move in close proximity to entertainment districts, you have no right to complain about noise. As previous writers have stated, one in particular said he installed double glazed windows to mitigate noise. Proactive, I would say. Me and Adz will continue to state our opinion "ad nauseam".
Tony Morley, Waratah
REGARDING Alan Harrison's letter in relation to a business not accepting cash (Short Takes, 11/11), I had the same at Wallsend recently - card only.
Brian Neal, Elermore Vale
SPONSORSHIP of sport is in the news. Strangely, sponsorship of COP27, the world summit on climate change, is not. Having Coca-Cola, a company comprehensively tied to the fossil fuel industry, and the world's top plastic polluter four years in a row, as sponsor of the world's most important climate conference beggars belief. Ironically or perhaps causally, the UN released its "High-Level Expert Group on the Net Zero Emissions Commitments of Non-State Entities" Integrity Matters report last week. This leads with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres' quote "We urgently need every business, investor, city, state and region to walk the talk on their net zero promises. We cannot afford slow movers, fake movers or any kind of greenwashing". It's high time, as the committee chair states, "to draw a red line around greenwashing". Coca-Cola, your sponsorship of COP27 is totally inappropriate and the ultimate in greenwashing. It's not OK.
Karen Campbell, Geelong
BY my observations a great many people in Australia will be extremely disappointed that the United Nations COP27 climate conference, presently being held in Egypt, appears to have attracted, to date, very little publicity here in Australia. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned those attending the conference, in relation to dealing with climate change, to "cooperate or perish". These are very powerful, but ever so true words. One can only hope that those attending the conference, and also many people in Australia, take heed of the secretary general's words.
