A 'base-load believer' in just 13 minutes

by Robert McLean

Mark Diesendorf took about 13 minutes to convince me that renewable energy was the key to powering the world.

Much reading and listening had left me hugely suspicious that renewable energy would be unable to produce the base load power that modern society needed.



Dr Mark Diesendorf.

In just one 13 minute interview recently on Radio National, Dr Diesendorf illustrated beyond doubt that renewable energy had the necessary capabilities and capacity to answer the demands of our industrial society.

Dr Diesendorf, from the University of New South Wales’ Institute of Environmental Studies, only late last year published the book: “Sustainable Energy Solutions for Climate Change”.

Beyond that, Professor Diesendorf will be the keynote speaker at an “Energy Forum” in Shepparton, Victoria, on Friday, September 26, this year staged by Slap Tomorrow.

Writing in his book, Dr Diesendorf said: “With smart design, a predominantly renewable electricity system can be just as reliable as one based on fossil fuels”.

Pointing to the complications associated with our use of fossil fuels, he wrote: “They are the major cause of global climate change; a major cause of air pollution with widespread severe impacts on human health; a significant cause of water pollution and land degradation; have very limited reserves (especially oil and good quality coal); are only relatively cheap because their environmental, health, social and some economic costs are excluded from their prices; are controlled by huge corporations and create relatively few jobs per unit of energy generated.

“Of the fossil fuels used on a large-scale, coal is the most damaging in terms of environmental and health impacts.

“Also, coal mining is one of the most dangerous occupations, even in industrialized countries,” he wrote.

Dr Diesendorf has encouraged people to think about the long-term, rather than falling into the trap of considering policies and ideas in a relation to the next electoral cycle.

“In practice,” he said, “scenarios may involve a mixture of forecasting and back-casting.”

“But without credible visions of a sustainable future and strategies to achieve them, it will be impossible to avoid devastating, irreversible changes to earth’s climate,” he wrote.

The efforts of Beneath the Wisteria and its sister organization, Slap Tomorrow, might sometimes seem nebulous and mostly a little like associating only with like-minded people, but Dr Diesendorf underlines the importance of their work.

He says: “Individual actions are necessary and valuable, but not sufficient to meet the challenge of climate change. To gain effective climate change policies from government, and business, pressure from a climate action movement is needed.”

“The first and key responsibility is, as citizens, to exercise our democratic rights collectively to demand that our governments take rapid and effective action by implementing appropriate laws, regulations and standards, pricing and funding policies, education and information, industry polices, institutional change and population polices,” he wrote.

Diesendorf has a message that all should listen and respond positively to, but they won’t.

Research clearly shows that unless a message rests comfortably with the recipient’s personal values, it simply becomes just another part of society’s “noise” that quickly leaks into the mental waste bin.

Sadly we can’t afford to let such critical messages as that told by Diesndorf in “Sustainable Energy Solutions for Climate Change” to simply “leak” away and so it rests with those of us concerned about the less than encouraging impacts of climate change to keep the message alive and tell it, repeatedly, until the people and our government begin to respond positively.