MEL court action, page-17

Muzz, here we are in the middle of winter and I have just turned my heater on for the first time in my office this year. Most weekends I have been wearing shorts and T Shirts during the day.

Yes I agree there have always been changes to the earth's climate - Ice Age, great oceans in the middle of Australia etc, but there is little doubt in my mind that air pollution causes damage to the environment - whether its air quality and the way that makes us feel, its affect on plants or the earth's temperature.

I've always live in houses that have had gas stoves, gas heaters and gas hot water. I can cook next to the gas stove and not smell smoke or any dirty emissions like a coal stove would. Preferably one day we will all have free energy from renewable sources, but until that day comes I support gas over coal.

The point I was trying to make above was that even though 30% from renewables is a great step forward - 70% is still from coal, gas or nuclear and if you can reduce the use of coal your overall CO2 emissions fall dramatically.

One other very interesting point from the Four Corners show which I did not mention was the Renewable Energy Target is not a % target but a fixed megawatt target in legislation for both small (solar on your roof) and large scale generation. So I guess they have projected a certain demand in 2020 and said therefore we need this much generation from renewables. But what has happened is that demand for electricity has fallen but the target has not and therefore by 2020 we in Australia will likely have 25-28% of our electricity from renewables, which is great.

If only the State & Federal Government could come up with an all encompassing environmental policy that would incentivise renewables and promote gas over coal then we would be off to a start.