Racetrack or lake? Debate heats up over future of Hazelwood

The shut-down of the Hazelwood power plant, finally completed just weeks ago, leaves a legacy that will last much longer than the jolt to Victoria’s energy market when the station’s old coal-fuelled turbines were turned off early last year.

Source: Latrobe Council

The giant plant and its adjoining open-cut coal mine leave a deep and ugly scar on the Latrobe Valley.

Everyone agrees the site must be rehabilitated. But the Latrobe City Council and Hazelwood owner Engie seem at loggerheads over what should replace the station and coal mine, which has a 16-kilometre perimeter, that once sustained the local economy and helped power Victoria.

The Latrobe Valley is facing a “disappointing and mediocre” replacement under Engie’s current plans to create a massive lake, the council says.

Read the story from The Age Benjamin Preiss  - “Racetrack or lake? Debate heats up over future of Hazelwood.”

War on terror costs insignificant, compared to climate change

Former U.S. president, George W. Bush, declared a war on terror.

Former U.S. president,
George W. Bush.
 

That war cost U.S. citizens dearly -the "war on terror" - and by terrorists - has directly killed a minimum of 62,006 people, created 4.5 million refugees and cost the U.S. more than the sum needed to pay off the debts of every poor nation on earth.

That alarming legacy of death does not stop there for if those of Iraq military killed during 2003 invasion, along with insurgents and the countless innocents are accounted for, and the can’t accurately be, the death toll leaps to near 200 000.

The cost to Americans specifically and the world generally was alarming.

However, compared to costs associated with climate change, they are insignificant and already many in the various militaries around the world have declared climate change the world’s greatest ever security threat.

Terrorism, some have said, is of little, or no consequence compared to what will unfold as the effects of climate change take hold.

We, well certainly Americans, Australians and the English, we prepared to pay to protect their lifestyle in the Bush “War on Terror”, but few, it appears are prepared to pay to do what they can to mitigate the circumstances that are changing our climate.

The Australian Federal Government is stepping away from being an active participant in combatting climate change, dismantling our climate change infrastructure and today moving in the first sitting of parliament since being elected in September, to repeal the carbon tax introduced by the then Labor Government.