THE problems and costs of getting large wind turbines and solar farms into regional NSW and destroying fertile agricultural land requires a re-think as to where the sustainable energy generation should be located.
There is a solution. Where is most of the energy required? In our cities and major urban/industrial areas.
Take Sydney as an example. Every high-rise office or residential building and major retail store in Sydney should have solar panels on their facades fixed between the ceiling line of the floor below and one metre above floor level. This would not affect the view aspect from the building.
The energy generated would be used by that building to power it at no cost to the population or government. The only cost being to the building owner (government and private) for the establishment of the solar panels, and they would recover their costs through a supply charge to their tenants. Unused energy would feed back into the grid.
For the suburbs of Sydney, every suburb would be required to accommodate a wind turbine and solar farm that would supply power to that community.
This means the city communities would be contributing to the environmental cause and not destroying forests or affecting the rural environmental landscape of country NSW with transmission lines, solar farms, or wind turbines.
Ian Pedersen, Jewells
Climate scare-mongers no help
BRIAN Measday ("We're fiddling while planet burns", Letters, 8/8) may need to temper his rhetoric and adjust to a more middle of the road constructive way forward.
Our environment is a very complex organism very capable of turning on us as it has done over billions of years on dominant species. I believe that blaming fossil fuels without any meaningful solution is shameless scare-mongering.
There are many other things that are capable of wiping us out; pandemics and big volcanic eruptions to name a few, well ahead of the threat of burning coal which will continue for at least 500 years like it or not.
The weather is fine at Coal Point.
Grahame Danaher, Coal Point
It's important we take action
THE planet is a life-support system. Anthropoids, and eventually homo sapiens, were only able to evolve when the mixes and amounts of gases in the atmosphere made it possible.
Carbon dioxide levels reduced to a level for us to evolve as enough of it had been taken from the atmosphere over millennia and sequestered underground.
However, we now find that releasing that sequestered carbon dioxide over the last 200 years is quickly returning the planet to a time when atmospheric conditions made it difficult or impossible for humans to exist.
Fossil fuels have been wonderful for humanity and have provided the energy we needed to get us where we are but the planet's physicians, the climate scientists, are unequivocal in their certainty that we have to stop fossil fuel use if we want a liveable future and we must stop immediately.
Ignoring them means we are playing a dangerous game with our only life-support system.
John Arnold, Anna Bay
We just want best for the city
SURELY lord mayor Nuatali Nelmes wasn't referring to me in her recent comments on NBN News. Then again, I am 74, the middle of her expressed age range; I can afford to travel and see cities better run than Newcastle; I'm mildly conservative and I, like a lot of people, know what Newcastle needs. It certainly doesn't need loose carpet under which difficult issues can be swept.
Topping it off, I criticised Newcastle council in a comment published recently. That was about footpaths, but I should also mention giving the centre of Newcastle to the Snail and Tortoise Tower Building Company, in my view allowing it to destroy the original CBD.
I went through the much-touted new CBD at Newcastle West recently and all I saw were many vacant shops and a couple of large building sites devoid of activity.
While in the west, what about the struggling, sunlight-starved young fig trees planted 40 years ago to take over from the older ones to allow a left-turn lane from Stewart Avenue into Parry Street? Another good project abandoned.
I believe we need new blood. People who wouldn't prematurely open our platinum-plated skate park - why are the toilets and the kiosk not ready, and where is the parking? Where also is the general manager, oops, CEO? I am starting to doubt he will ever return. Good luck my adoptive city. Most of us are on your side.
Ray Dinneen, Newcastle
Forget high-speed train, let's get reliable
Instead of a fantasy fast train I'd gladly settle for a reliable, all weather train service that can safely transit past Cockle Creek after a heavy downpour.
Bruce Taggart, Hamilton South
Harris impresses as alternative
I follow American politics closely and I can assure Peter Devey ("Harris inspires little confidence", Letters, 12/8), that Kamala Harris is highly intelligent, articulate, compassionate and honest - everything Trump is not. She has ignited the Democratic party into action along with running mate Tim Walz. I believe she will be the next POTUS. Branding her a "giggling hyena" is the type of juvenile name calling Trump resorts to.
Bruce Gain, Newcastle
We've survived Donald's reign
Peter Devey: if we survived four years of Trump then the election of Kamala Harris won't be a problem.
Daryl Frost, Eleebana
Trump's record speaks volumes
Two words for you Peter Devey when it comes to Donald Trump ("Harris inspires little confidence", Letters, 12/8): bleach and disinfectant. I'll back an intelligent, experienced giggling Gertie any day.
Julie Robinson, Cardiff
Bennett has outpaced Gibson
You're dead right David Davies ("There's only really one Supercoach", Letters, 12/8). Wayne Bennett has done a hell of a lot more than Jack Gibson for the game. Numerous premierships. numerous Origin wins. Numerous World Cup wins. I'm a New South Welshman but I have met Wayne Bennett a few times over the years here in Newcastle and Wollongong. He's a completely different man away from the cameras.
Matt McAlary, Waratah
Bans are for a greater good
Bill Shorten suggests banning gambling and alcohol advertising could send free to air networks. If that's the case, then who is addicted here?
