farmdoc's blog post number 202

Last Tuesday I finished reading Thomas L Friedman’s wonderful 2008 book Hot, Flat, and Crowded. I won’t tell you much about it because I want you to read it yourself. But Friedman persuasively argues for an energy revolution – via replacement of ‘energy from hell’ (oil, gas, coal) with ‘energy from heaven’ (solar, solar thermal, wind, tidal). He considers this is the only way to solve the crises of global warming and climate change; it’ll be very very expensive; like all revolutions it’ll be painful and there’ll be casualties; the USA must lead it; and indeed the USA is the only nation on earth which can. But above all he believes the revolution must start immediately because there’s no time to waste. I wholeheartedly agree. I have no time for Australia’s environment minister Peter Garrett because he has gutlessly acquiesced in the Tasmanian pulp mill proposal and the Victorian channel deepening proposal, among others. But last Tuesday he gave a speech arguing that the economy is a subset of the environment, and not vice versa. I wholeheartedly agree, and undoubtedly Tom Friedman would too. But not so the dinosaurs of this nation, to wit the CFMEU, the National Party, and VECCI. Don’t these people live on our planet? Can’t they look beyond their own blinkered self interest? Seemingly not. Fools. Dolts. Bring on the (energy) revolution. Now.