Wooley: All the energy debate has done so far, is create a lot of hot air

Politicians can’t even pronounce the word ‘nuclear’ let alone enunciate a coherent policy, writes Charles Wooley.

An environmental activist wearing a cardboard cutout showing the face of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is seen during a protest rally in front of Kirribilli House, in Sydney, on May 8, calling for the Albanese government to halt further approvals of coal and gas projects. Picture: Saeed KHAN / AFP

Unclear is an anagram of nuclear.

But only if you pronounce it properly.

In Canberra last week, whether they were for it or agin it, half of our politicians were calling it ‘new-kyoo-lar’ power.

I’ve heard Opposition Leader Peter Dutton use that pronunciation, while midweek on ABC News Radio I heard Albo swing over to ‘noo-clear’. He is getting closer to the correct form which is of course (as we should all know kiddies) ‘new-clear’.

I’m not a fascist about English usage. I know ours is a changing language. The word ‘sincere’ once meant ‘without wax’. And ‘fulsome’ once meant ‘insincere’.

Which traditionally might have meant ‘not without wax’.

Still, if we are now sincere about having a fulsome debate about nuclear power, I would prefer both sides to know how to say it.

Is Dutton’s embrace of nuclear power with or without wax, and will it wax or wane as we approach the next federal election?

We don’t know because he won’t tell us the details.

A cartoon by John ‘Polly’ Farmer titled ‘Unclear Power’ (first published in the Hobart Mercury, on June 14). The cartoon sums up the confusion surrounding Peter Dutton’s nuclear power policy.

With Dutton nuclear remains anagrammatically unclear.

But it wouldn’t be fair to beat up on Dutton’s obfuscation about how, when and where he releases the power of the Aussie atom without drawing attention to Albo’s even greater obfuscations over coal.

For Labor, however much they protest it still seems there really is no fuel like an old fuel.

Labor continues to support an energy policy that positions Australia as the world’s second biggest exporter of coal, after Indonesia.

Indonesia 471 million tonnes. Australia 359 million tonnes.

The Prime Minister recently assured international markets that, “Australia will remain a reliable source of global energy”.

This, as he closes down coal-fired power stations in Australia forcing up the cost of domestic power and increasing the costs for Australian businesses.

All the while exporting the carbon pollution to the customers who buy our coal and then falsely claiming some kind of carbon virtue for not burning it at home.

An environmental activist wearing a cardboard cutout showing the face of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is seen during a protest rally in front of Kirribilli House, in Sydney, on May 8, calling for the Albanese government to halt further approvals of coal and gas projects. Picture: Saeed KHAN / AFP

Of course, at the same time we are exporting Australian jobs to countries whose manufacturing costs are much lower, in part because their energy bills are lower because they burn our coal.

Clearly there appears a terrible duplicity here with few people now seriously doubting the challenges of global warming and the role CO2 emissions play.

The Coalition might privately disbelieve the science, but given general public acceptance that the world is heating up, they are now afraid to look cranky by speaking their mind.

Instead, they move the carbon zero goalposts way back down the field and spruik nuclear power for the remote future.

In reality Albo has wedged them, along with the rest of the country.

Everyone knows in the absence of making anything in this country we need the $127,000,000,000 revenue from our climate hypocrisy. All those zeros in our declining economy mean there are just too many nothings to see here.

Anyone still reading these troubling musings will have to admit that their material lives benefit from the export of coal which helps make us the third richest country per adult in the world.

But the awkward truth we all need to recognise is that our present policy puts us in the position of a drug dealer who has decided to wean himself off dope while continuing to make huge profits by selling it to others.

And another thing.

Whether it’s iron ore, coal or uranium we are going to need to dig up a whole lot more stuff because Australia is getting older. By 2026 we can expect more than 22 per cent of the population to be aged over 65.

Even in the short term by 2028-29 the ageing of Australia will add an annual cost to the budget of about $36bn.

Victoria’s Yallourn coal-fired power station is one of several sites facing closure in the next few years. Picture: Jason Edwards

That’s right kiddies, already there are costly old farts everywhere and be warned, soon there will be many more.

When I started work in the 1970s, even 30-year-olds seemed old.

Today’s kids still working in 2063, barring nuclear or climate catastrophe (the young have so much to look forward to), might expect for every two people working there will be an 80-year-old riding on their shoulders.

Kids, it won’t be me.

Despite my mum Ella lasting 100 years I am most unlikely to be a burden for you to shoulder in 2063.

Having had a great life, I will have long ago bequeathed the charred and depleted Earth to you.

I am sorry about that.

My mob started out with the best of intentions and somehow dropped the ball. We became the most self-indulgent, feckless and wasteful generation in history.

At least until the next guys.

Unfortunately, there will always be an endless supply of selfish old farts who when the party is over, instead of looking in the mirror will look around for someone else to blame.

I say, blame a bloke named Akira Endo.

He was the Japanese scientist who in 1973 discovered statins, the cholesterol lowering compound which has so far prolonged the lives of perhaps a million Australians and in the longer-term many millions.

Charles Wooley says when it’s time for him to shuffle off this mortal coil he’ll hopefully be able go quietly, fill his waders and subside into the trout-filled waters of Bronte Lagoon.

Actually, it’s too late to blame Akira Endo. He died this week at the age of 90, sadly without having won a Nobel prize for his ingenious medical breakthrough.

The cause of his death has not yet been published.

But it’s a reasonable bet he didn’t have a heart attack.

I am one of 2.6 million Australians who take statins.

I don’t want to be a burden by hanging around too long, but I am still working and paying tax and would be a bigger nuisance if I had a heart attack or a stroke.

In time I will go quietly when my waders fill up and I subside into the trout-filled waters of Bronte Lagoon.

I will even leave a short headline for the briefest notification of my departure.

Wooley’s Wellingtons’ Waterloo.

Charles Wooley is a Tasmania-based journalist