We can't make the same mistake twice with climate change

A switch to renewables is needed, but we must know all their issues or we're just doomed to repeat our past errors.

We need to change to renewables, but just "switch off coal” in the next decade is a naive answer to a complex problem. Picture: Mark Schiefelbein

"HEY you, let's fight” are astoundingly effective fighting words but the next best surely has to be "climate change”.

There's no doubt the switch to cleaner energy is needed.

But unfortunately the search for a solution is being buried under a Beijing-style smog born of political puritanism on both sides.

Start with the idea of: let's burn more coal.

Some solar farms are having issues with burning birds. Picture: .

It's great if you think breathing is overrated and enjoy broiling lobsters so much you want to try it out for yourself.

But let's not get overjoyed about the "niceties” of renewables. Like the small detail that wind turbines reportedly kill more than 1 million birds and bats in the US every year.

Or that in 2016 the Mojave Desert solar farm was found to be char-grilling and incinerating 6000 birds every year.

From a glass-half-full perspective though, this could be an answer to that "world hunger” thing. Why go to KFC when it comes to you?

Car exhausts were once considered to have found a "green” solution to pollution. How times have changed.

And batteries are nice (and needed) but we rip the Earth apart to make them too.

Governments dropped the ball once when it came to cars, choosing carbon dioxide- producing catalytic converters and dropping further investment in lean-burn technology - which is cleaner but was further away from being ready.

But the converters were the quick, easy and politically correct environmental choice at the time. How's that looking now? Yes, let's change the world. But let's not make the same mistake twice.