Perfect storm of eco-idiocy threatening to turn out the lights

Anti-coal protesters glamorized, coal producers demonised, and the entire economy on the brink for want of the one thing that would keep us out of trouble, namely, reliable coal-fired power.

New South Wales is staring down the barrel of a Category 5 perfect storm of idiocy.

Let’s consider the events of the past 24 hours, shall we?

Over the weekend more than 170 people were arrested for (allegedly) trying to block the nation’s largest coal port at Newcastle, after promising the local council their actions would not interfere with shipping.

Despite some of the protesters having been arrested for similar actions more than a dozen times, it appears “unlikely” that any of them will cop a custodial sentence for what should properly be called not free speech but economic vandalism.

You really have to pity the poor cops who, after a year of dealing with pro-Palestine agitators, now have to spend their time fishing climate activists out of the water.

Rising Tide protesterstake to the water to protest coal mining. Photographer: Adam yip

Meanwhile, it being late November, the weather is turning hot and people quite understandably are going home after work and cranking up the air conditioning.

This wouldn’t be a problem in a modern, prosperous, developed nation like ours except for one thing.

Students and climate protesters take to blockade access to the Newcastle coal port. Picture: Getty

Our supposedly gold plated electricity grid has been loaded so full of renewables that the energy regulator is warning of blackouts on Wednesday.

This is what happened at Broken Hill recently, when the town lost power for days when long distance transmission towers came down in a storm.

Local solar and wind farms and a “big battery” – the same technologies Labor wants to power the entire nation – turned out to be, surprise, useless in keeping the lights on.

To prevent this, large energy users like smelters and manufacturers may be told to go dark (is it any wonder that the latest Harvard ranking of economies by complexity saw Australia slip to 102 out of 145 countries studies, behind Bangladesh and Senegal?).

In other words, businesses in the western suburbs and regions will be forced to pay the price for policies driven by green-minded inner city voters whose reverse cycles will still spin and whose plunge pool filters will still hum.

And to add injury to insult, three of the state’s four coal fired plants – you know, those things that actually provide stable electricity – are offline for maintenance or repairs as their operators, sniffing the political wind, let them run down.

So there you have it. Anti-coal protesters glamorized, coal producers demonised, and the entire economy on the brink for want of the one thing that would keep us out of trouble, namely, coal fired power.

A perfect storm of idiocy.