Where we are now.
We are currently living in a system of oil and coal. This is unsustainable as eventually we’ll run out.
It does tremendous damage to our environment via damaging our gases in the air, the litter, oil spills, ‘climate change’, smoke making it harder to breath, smog which is killing our children and elderly, sewerage dumped into the ocean.
We are also heavily vulnerable to foreigner stock market speculators who manipulate the price of oil in order to make more money.

Where we want to be.
In a system where Australia and the whole world is run on clean renewable energy.
It will do wonders for our environment – it will create a world in which humans and nature can live in a peaceful coexistence, which is a world no one can disagree with.
And it will protect us from speculators by making us energy independent from others.

The biggest problem is that those renewable energy technologies haven’t been properly developed and created yet.

So how do we get from A to B?

a) Government intervention. Nationalise the entire energy sector, push tonnes of capital into renewable energy investments. When those technologies come available, disband the oil and coal industries and make the whole country run on renewables. Outlaw other types of energy sources.

b) Neo-liberalism. Don’t do anything. Allow the invisible hand of the ‘free market’ to eventually bring us to renewable energy.

c) Tax and spend. Put a tax on carbon, which will eventually make oil and coal so expensive to use that it will force capitalists to invest into renewable energies. (The extra revenue collected from the tax can assist further government programs.) But by giving millions of dollars in credits, you are reducing the impact of the very program you’re pushing in place for that reason.
Of course, this is a tax on the poor and working class, while the rich don’t get affected at all.

d) Make investment cheap as chips. Put a tax onto the rich, while will gain a certain level of extra government revenue.
Use this money to give credit and tax cuts to all capitalists who invest money into renewable energy.
Capitalists will go anywhere if it means they can make money – so make renewable energy such a delicious option that they can’t resist it.

e) Don’t do anything. Claim that the environment isn’t being damaged at all by coal and oil, and that everything is just fine the way it is now.

There is agreement approaching consensus that a successful program of action on climate change must support two objectives—stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs) and maintaining economic growth. Achieving both these aims will require a tenfold increase in “carbon productivity,” the amount of GDP produced per unit of carbon equivalents (CO2e) emitted. The economic costs of this “carbon revolution” are likely to be manageable at some 0.6–1.4 percent of global GDP by 2030.

The “carbon revolution” that is necessary is comparable in magnitude to the labor productivity increases of the Industrial Revolution but will have to be achieved in one-third of the time if the world is to maintain current growth levels while meeting commonly discussed abatement targets.

There are five areas on which we should focus. First, boosting energy efficiency could cut global energy demand by 20-24 percent of projected 2020 demand. Second, to reduce emissions by one-fifth of current levels by 2020, the carbon productivity of energy sources must increase by two-thirds. Third, additional investment in R&D and incentives to boost innovation will be necessary. Fourth, companies and governments can do more to educate consumers on “green” behavior. Fifth, forestation and avoided forestation offer the largest abatement lever at 25 percent of the global total under €40 per ton.

I would quote from the other links. However, the problem is the sam as the link for Swedish smelting. The links are for thinktank general scenario compilations. Which makes JC’s comment of “”Are you a journalist? I’m only asking because you seem to be making the mistakes a generalist reporter makes when they are given a specialist topic for the first time and are up against a deadline (and of course while the subs can correct your writing they don’t have time to go over the accuracy of your content). You know the sort of mistakes…scanning a document hoping to pick the eyes out of it rather than reading it and ending up missing what the author actually says. Anyway, just curious.”" humorous. These linked do not give the type of information needed nor in a real sense can they.

Consider the discussion of the Jevons Paradox. It is proposed to avert this. How? Your guess is as good as any. These are position papers, not papers with ROI, expected lifetime/depreciation, MTBF (mean time between failure), present cost/future worth calculations, etc. No lifetime cycle studies, etc. Though please note such difficult goals such it requires a 10 fold increase in carbon productivity in an area where 10% increase in effecicensy in say a natural gas boiler would mean a ROI as little as a year depending on cost per decatherm. But the claim is made that there are all these opportunities. Not really, they assume technologicl advances. A good asssumption but hard to quantify. Not a problem here because the basis of the quantification are not given. No mention of incremental cost or incremental changeover costs, even though economy of scale is mentioned. How about the lifetime of enegy sources is presenty 20+ years. Where is the detail showing the loss of revenue or the adjusted costs for energy source changeovers that occur for current energy sources built recently or schedued to be built?

And we’ve just come off 127 litres of water per person per day in SEQ up to 155. Nobody died. Showers were had. The washing got done…. sheeshhhh !!! And a long way from the profligate waste of 300 per day.

Pull the other ones Cohers. And take your pinky off the scales.

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/11/wind-power-exposed-the-renewable-energy-source-is-expensive-and-unreliable/?cp=all

The pear’s effort is astounding; this

“In developing scenarios for the future, it is appropriate to assume that people will seek higher levels of comfort and amenity, but these trends have upper limits. For example… the length of a shower is constrained by the need to go to work or the tendency for skin to shrivel up.”

Not to worry, this urge for uber cleanliness can be countered by “aggressive mandatory energy efficiency standards” and “education and information programs”; how very Orwellian. All this talk about efficiency has the imprimatur of ascetism and puritanical stoicism. It begs the question; why do we have to be more efficient? Peak oil? Environmental degradation? Greed and selfishness are bad? Because its moral to be thrifty not profligate? Saving the planet? Self-discipline is good for the soul? Whatever, just don’t pretend its AGW.

Looks to be another La Nina starting up. Of course, this would fit into the ~30 year interval for PDO. Sorry about that you CO2 enthusiasts. Back to back La Ninas should start stretching your hallucinations nicely!!

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf

Tim, you will never get Luke’s email address – they guy has serious personality disorders and I doubt that his appelation “Luke Walker” is real as well.

Now let’s waity for the next torrent of Lukian Bilge.

Gavin: of course I overlooked that Cap’n Cook sailed up the Congo in c1776 – not to mention the Limpopo, Zambezi, and Upper Nile taking temps all along the way and then mailing them, post-dated – to GISS, with its remarkable data base of global temps from the beginning of time.