Waleed wages war on coal but can’t grasp why black gold’s still wins
Waleed Aly says coal is dead, The Age, Thursday:
Symmetry isn’t always beautiful. Take this week, when Victoria’s coal-fired Hazelwood power plant ground to its inevitable halt just as President Trump signed his coal-fired executive order undoing the bulk of the Obama administration’s climate change policies ... they’re telling the same story. It’s a story of steady decline, artificial enemies and false hope. And it’s a story that tends only to produce misery.
Yet, Waleed’s TV show is still alive. Daily Telegraph, March 28:
TV heavyweights have lambasted Australian television’s awards night as an industry embarrassment after two hosts from The Project received Gold Logie nods despite the “news-lite” program being smashed in the ratings by 28 other shows last week ...
For its most watched episode of last week, the news and current affairs program managed to pull only 549,000 viewers: that was less than Better Homes and Gardens, Planet Earth II and Death in Paradise.
Quadrant Online’s Roger Franklin says Waleed’s anti-coal rant is full of holes. Quadrant Online, Saturday:
Sharper readers will catch the whiff of familiar untruths, garnished as always with conspicuous omissions, that have grown rancid in the course of frequent packaging and repackaging.
“Who needs coal when there’s gas?” states Waleed in The Age, Thursday:
In America, coal is under siege from cheap natural gas that is only getting cheaper and more plentiful.
We have our own gas problem Down Under. Franklin on Quadrant Online, continued:
... state governments have banned gas exploration and thereby promoted shortfalls in domestic supply.
Has Waleed changed his tune on allowing greater gas exploration in this country? The Age, March 16:
... the gas industry is desperate to get its hands on gas supplies that are off limits — especially controversial ones like, say, coal seam gas.
Waleed wails the market killed coal. The Age, Thursday:
... climate denialism is one thing, this commercial denialism (in propping up coal) is quite another because in the long run, it screws the very people it claims to be protecting.
But coal production in America has increased. Brookings Institute, January 25:
... coal production grew by 8 per cent, to about 897 million short tons in 2015.
Coal jobs are disappearing but blame robots, not an anti-coal market. Brookings Institute, continue d:
In the next decade, the coal mining industry will likely lose even more jobs to automation.
The mines are not the big employer they once were, Waleed, but it’s still ordinary people who will suffer if they vanish. Quadrant Online, Saturday:
Well let’s just wait until summer, when the blackouts come, and we’ll see then who gets screwed by a genuine variety of “commercial denialism”.
Coal has its problems but Australia still needs it to power homes and businesses. The Australian’s editorial, Friday:
At least the Turnbull government is on the right track in encouraging the construction of new clean-coal-fired power stations in an effort to mitigate Australia’s energy security and pricing crisis.