Oh no ... the wind has stopped blowing., page-29

Sometimes we must be realists and stop dreaming;

Solar, when you consider the energy that goes into mining the elements, manufacturing the panels, chemicals used during the process (and then repeat that for all the batteries required to store it)... the toll on wildlife from a death ray in the skies and the relatively short lifespan and fact that panels aren't easy to recycle and hence end up leeching in landfill.
I dare theorize there is a net negative carbon footprint at the end of the day.
Wind falls into many of the same issues as above.
Neither of the above are scalable to an entire population - certainly not one with the low density we have in Aus.

The better questions are why is our govt. so complacent to keep coal as our dirty little secret for so long?

Nuclear tech has come a long way and the risks are extremely low these days... unlike Japan for example we have plenty of open land far away from urban areas to further minimize risks of a failure - and a heck of a lot of already contaminated desert area to discard waste thanks to the U.S bomb testing.

I've been following ITER rather closely. Of course Aus has been too shortsighted to participate in this and benefit from the tech for a fast tracked adoption if it proves successful (not long to wait now!). Truly a shame.

We have immense tidal potential in areas like the Bass Straight, again our govt too complacent with the dirty secret.