Kill trees, pollute the air, punish the poor and protect coal underground
Just another day in Green heaven.
Wood smoke over Canberra | Photo from Clean Air Canberra
The Australian capital city Canberra in midwinter is often minus 1 to 5 degrees C in the morning. Australian homes can get very cold and with heating bills rocketing, things are defacto becoming like life in Berlin, which is in a pre-War energy crisis. No one labeled Canberra public halls as “warm spaces” and they definitely aren’t open at night (it’s the public service!), but crowds are arriving at libraries just to escape the cold.
The ACT Government are a Labor-Green alliance, and are proudly, exuberantly “100% Renewable”, but won’t dare cut the cord to the coal plants that keep the lights on, making the claims of being 100% renewable a form of 100% false advertising. Even the ABC admits that the ACT itself only generates 5% of its own power, and 80% of the energy coming to the ACT through the wires is from fossil fuels. They pay off some distant wind farms to balance the theoretical gigawatt-hour tallies, and sponge off the states around for cheaper backup and stability that the coal plants provide.
But as electricity prices rises 14% of Canberrans are heating their homes with wood. This has predictably increased actual air pollution. So now there is a movement to ban wood fires.
If only there was a 300 year supply of cheap fuel to burn at centralized clean power stations…
Like all Green policies putting fashion before facts, they get the opposite of what they aim for.
Canberra: where electricity is a luxury the poor can’t afford
Tina Faulk, The Spectator
Public libraries in the National Capital are now considered, by staff and patrons alike, to be ‘community centres’ where people come to read, use the computers, charge their phones, and use the toilets. It’s where clients of the NDIS, escorted by carers, are brought and propped up in their wheelchairs in front of computers or seated in deep armchairs by the magazine stands. Some, abandoned by their carers, shout incoherently for attention. Newly arrived migrants – Somalis, Iraqis, Syrians – jostle for attention of the library staff, asking for translation assistance with various forms and declarations.
Our libraries, warm and welcoming, have a crowd at their doors before the 10 am opening.
Groups of women discuss where they go to get warm:
One [woman] who recently ‘VR-ed’ (Voluntary Retired) still goes back to her old workplace, usually late morning, when the security guard who remembers her gives a nod and a smile as she settles into one of the comfortable settees in the reception area.
How sad is that — going back to her old workplace foyer just to stay warm?
Wood heaters in the firing line as temps drop and pollution rises
Lottie Twyford, Riotact
A recent report showed woodfire heater smoke is the largest source of winter air pollution in Canberra. Currently, around 14 per cent of people in the ACT use a woodfire heater as their main source of heating.
Analysis of air quality shows the impacts of smoke are worse down south because the shape of the valley and temperature inversions hold pollutants closer to the ground. In 2020, there were 37 days in Tuggeranong when pollution levels were above acceptable levels; of those, 13 can be attributed to woodfire heater emissions, Mr Davis told the ACT Legislative Assembly.
The local newspaper is running stories about the “right temperature” to heat homes to. They suggest 18°C (colder than the public buildings in Germany which are now set down to 20°C). A few years ago I stayed with a friend in Canberra and the room was 11°C (and it was only May!).