Economic self-harm not to embrace the nuclear option

Johannes Leak’s cartoon (4/12) captures the irony of Australia in the naughty corner at COP28, back turned to the rest of the world now focused on the benefits of tripling nuclear energy by 2050. At home a domestic ban is enforced while uranium is exported. Labor is unwilling to learn from international experience.

Only an out-of-touch government could pursue hosting a future COP talkfest while the community struggles with a cost-of-living crisis. A vanity project not warranted on the grounds of cost, necessity or performance.

In Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s first year in office emissions went up, prices increased, reliability fell, protests grew and energy poverty became entrenched. Every project is over time and over budget. Promises made will be promises broken. Not a record to be paraded to an international audience.

Faced with a trickle of private investment in renewables, Bowen now promises to underwrite future projects. Losses will be socialised, leading to market distortions. We could see the last remaining coal-fired power stations closing earlier, gas projects abandoned and a domestic nuclear ban remaining.

While the world has embraced nuclear, we continue on a path of economic self-harm, with no certainty about our energy future. No other country believes its economy can be powered on renewables. Bowen’s scheme is a desperate last throw of the dice. What then, Minister Bowen?

Jennie George, Mollymook, NSW

We have seen this B-grade movie before. As the Dubai COP28 gets under way with the usual coterie of self-interested leaders and emission-reduction activists, the same tired old declarations and agreements are being churned out. While there is supposedly “unanimous” agreement that fossil fuels must be phased out, not one signatory, personal or collective, has warned of the predictable reduction in living standards this will entail. (As ever, major emitters China and India are not taking part.) And as said leaders and activists fly home from COP28, in fossil-fuel-guzzling jets to their fossil-fuel-supplied energy-intensive lifestyles, we wait to observe the usual disintegration of their declarations and agreements before arrangements for COP29 signal yet another B-grade movie.

Peter M. Wargent, Mosman, NSW

You cannot cherrypick individual recommendations from the COP28 climate change conference (“Lift your nuclear ban, Macron urges us”, 4/11). Australia is being increasingly isolated from the rest of the modern world with Chris Bowen’s refusal at least to debate nuclear energy. Failing to back 20 nations including the US, Canada, France, Japan, the United Arab Emirates and the UK in pledging to triple nuclear energy capacity globally by 2050 will lead to Australia becoming an international laughing-stock.

Riley Brown, Bondi Beach, NSW

In defence of turtles

Go the turtle (“Turtle threatens to sink $14bn hydro hopes”, 4/12). Pumped hydro is just another expensive battery that is needed to back up unnecessary renewable power. Then you need the transmission lines and other infrastructure to connect it to the existing grid. When we should be acknowledging the folly of Snowy 2.0, our politicians blindly carry on. It’s far from proven that CO2 is an existential threat, and to spend that sort of money is simply irresponsible. We urgently need to be upgrading our existing coal-fired power stations and constructing new nuclear ones before we bankrupt ourselves.

Ross McDonald, Gordon, NSW

Coke and diabetes

Over the years I have been fortunate to undertake numerous trips into the Outback where it usually becomes necessary to call into an Aboriginal community to buy fuel and a few necessities. Chatting to the shop manager invariably revealed the highest-selling item in the shop was Coca-Cola. Further inquiry revealed fresh fruit and vegetables, often shipped in at subsidised cost, did not sell well. The diabetes epidemic is a surprise only to those who didn’t want to know (“Type 2 diabetes epidemic sweeping Central Australia”, 2-3/12). Governments on both sides have resisted taxing sugar in drinks. Go figure.

Richard Young, Claremont, WA

A Eureka moment

If the neo-Nazis who marched through Ballarat thought celebrating the anniversary of the Eureka rebellion was in some way a demonstration of their beliefs, maybe someone should remind them that the first of the Eureka miners to be acquitted happened to be John Joseph, an African American – an escaped slave. On his acquittal he was feted as a hero and carried shoulder high through the streets of Melbourne. Peter Lalor and his men must surely have been turning in their graves over the weekend.

Les Whittaker, Port Douglas, Qld