Count your Blessings

They complained about the coal mine, sitting quietly beside its own power station and producing cheap reliable electricity.

So we gave them 500 gas wells, each with its own access road and a network of pipelines taking gas to the distant power station. Then they complained about the traffic, and the maze of pipelines and wells, and coping with the waste water, and the rising cost of electricity. So we gave them 5,000 noisy wind turbines and 10,000 dust-collecting solar panels, with a vast spider-web of access roads and transmission lines. And the price of electricity soared. But then the wind failed, clouds obscured the sun, the grid suddenly became unstable, and the lights went out. Now they wish they had stuck with the coal mine and its neat and dependable power station. Viv Forbes

Viv Forbes——Bio and Archives

Viv Forbes, Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition, has spent his life working in exploration, mining, farming, infrastructure, financial analysis and political commentary. He has worked for government departments, private companies and now works as a private contractor and farmer.

Viv has also been a guest writer for the Asian Wall Street Journal, Business Queensland and mining newspapers. He was awarded the “Australian Adam Smith Award for Services to the Free Society” in 1988, and has written widely on political, technical and economic subjects.