Meanwhile, the Greens have revealed new Access Economics figures showing the Federal Government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme will lower Tasmanian coffers to the tune of $21 million a year by 2013-14 and $102 million a year by 2020-21
http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2009/07/03/82261_tasmania-news.html
Now let me see...
First we stopped building hydro dams because the Greens didn't like them.
Then we "put more pressure on the forests" as they urged.
Then we moved toward economic reliance on tourism as manufacturing became strangled by lack of power.
Then we paid $780 million for a cable to import coal-fired power from Victoria, another scheme first promoted by the Greens.
And also we spent almost the exact same amount on gas and gas-fired generation to keep the lights from literally going out.
Plus another $200 million to squeeze the last little bit out of the existing dams and power stations.
And now we're going to be paying $102 million a year, and that's just at the state government level (ie excluding consumers and industry) due to having done as the Greens demanded.
Now, by my math that's $1760 million invested, plus $102 million a year in losses.
And that's not counting the cost of the electricity and gas we're importing. Nor does it include the $83 million spent on fuel oil in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Nor does it include the cost of the emergency gas turbines. Nor does it include all that money spent on transmission to make the importing and exporting work reliably. All up that's easily $2 billion.
The Gordon-below-Franklin dam would have cost $430 million. Once.
Or we could have spent $1.25 billion, still less than we actually spent, and built what would have been two thirds the size of the entire Snowy scheme, thus ensuring we had plenty of power and no need to worry about any of this nonsense.
Now, I'm not hell bent on flooding the wilderness for the sake of it and nor am I trying to start any new debate over that dam. But I've seen the 180 degree shift in the argument over the years and I've seen nothing to give even the slightest shred of credibility to those who argued in favour of fossil fuels rather than hydro. Everything those who argued for the dam said would happen if it wasn't built, has either actually happened or has the Greens now demanding compensation for when it does happen. We knew about peak oil, we knew about CO2 and that was the reason for wanting to build it in the first place.
Even Bob Brown acknoledges that the damage done by dams can be reversed in a matter of decades at most, whilst claiming the burning of coal is dooming us all forever, so what was the point of it all? It's not economics that's for sure, and it doesn't seem to be about actually saving the climate either. Nor was it the claimed benefit of tourism, given that hardly anyone actually goes to that river (the number being far outweighed by visitors to the nearby Gordon Dam...).
The Greens demanding compensation for the cost of fossil fuel energy in Tasmania is akin to Labor demanding compensation for the cost of joining the union or Liberals whinging about the GST. It's a sad, pathetic joke that's cost us all an outright fortune.
And now we're set to take this sort of nonsense national...