Inconvenient facts abound in debate on electric vehicles
In all the talk about electric vehicles, only Robert Gottliebsen has touched on the realities (“Empower grid, not Greens”, 11/4). Replacing 50 per cent of petrol-powered cars with electric cars will result in a doubling of the electrical load at a time when we are compromising the electricity supply by retiring coal-fired, base-load electricity sources and replacing them with intermittent renewables.
In the event that we somehow contrive to accommodate the increased load, to do so would require charging of batteries be spread over a 24-hour period. But if we were to plug our cars into the system in the late afternoon and evening, the load would be more than 20 times what we now have.
If it takes 10 minutes to recharge an electric car, has anyone thought how many individual outlets will have to be provided at service points for these new cars? Most service stations have at least eight individual connections for fuel. If the electric cars require 10 minutes instead of the usual two minutes to refill a petrol-fuelled car it will mean these new electric servos will need at least 40 connections to handle this new waiting time for the same number of cars.
If they only have half the range of petrol cars they will need to be fuelled twice as often as petrol-fuelled cars to travel the same distance. The congestion should be electrifying.
Live and let live, Mr Folau
Israel Folau should realise there’s a long-standing tradition in this country known as live and let live. It means that I live my own life without bothering anyone else, and others will do the same for me. In that way we all end up the best of mates.
Folau’s strident social media post won’t encourage people to change their lives. All it does is make them angry. Folau should just be the best person he can be, according to his own standards, and leave other people to do the same. Most of us don’t care whether or not he’s a brilliant footballer, or whether he’s a religious person.
Money can’t buy me love
Thank you, Caroline Overington, for inserting a morsel of sense into the mass of hoo-ha and razzmatazz surrounding Jamie’s Packer’s progress to even greater wealth (“He wants the one thing all his money will never buy”, 10/4).
Perhaps, when freed from the pressures of keeping his inherited fortune intact, he will have time for a little light reading. I suggest St Mark’s gospel which contains Jesus’s aphorism: What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and suffers the loss of his soul?
From what I read of the world’s contented billionaires, they seem to achieve joy and contentment by giving a lot of their wealth away to improve the lives of less fortunate individuals, with respect to health education and the like. Perhaps Packer should give that a whirl?
Language overtones
In these times it might be helpful to consider a term for murderous radicals, to avoid labels such as Islamist extremist or white supremacist. Identity politics, and the bullying it generates, bedevils our democracy.
Let’s remove the racist and religious overtones. How about “authoritarian extremist”? For whether the murderer of innocents believes he is acting on behalf of a god, or his own twisted ideology, he wishes to impose a rigid authority on society: they say they alone are right, everyone else is wrong and so they deserve to suffer. All terrorists have this in common. Their own peculiar authority trumps the authority of law, tradition and common humanity. Authoritarian extremism is the enemy of humanity.
Gender intervention a betrayal of the nation’s vulnerable youth
Major policy statements from democratic institutions, led by the UK’s Cass Review and the US fightback for common sense, are dropping totally disproved medical procedures.
Food industry brings home extent of our energy crisis
With big increases in electricity bills leading to higher food prices, the conclusion is that by placing ideology over pragmatism, the Albanese government has failed us.