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LETTERS The Labor Government is quick to burden industries amidst claims of a supposed "climate emergency" by raising the renewable energy target to 50 per cent by 2030, while it chooses to ignore more urgent and genuine emergencies like our waste and energy crises. Greens MP Dr Ratnam (to no surprise) echoed this sentiment when she recently called for a moratorium to be placed on any approvals for waste incinerators in Victoria. This antagonism towards combustible waste incinerators lacks any basis in reason or knowledge of the matter. Recently I visited wasteto-energy plants in the UK and Scandinavia which have been operating successfully for years. All of these projects are extremely productive and offer a clean way of dealing with domestic combustible waste. Given our energy and waste crises, with 1.3 million Victorian households at risk of blackouts this coming summer and China ceasing to import our waste, waste-to-energy plants are a common-sense solution. Instead, we continue to bury our waste in the ground and export it to less developed nations, rather than exploring innovative and modern solutions to energy and recycling issues. I suggest that we should explore all of these alternatives, including other methods of recycling used overseas such as turning glass into road making material and old clothing into carpet. When I asked the Energy Minister about waste-toenergy plants in Parliament, she insisted that "it is better to reduce the amount of waste we produce in the first place" rather than use it to power the homes that suffer blackouts under her watch this summer. I urge the government to work with local councils and waste to energy companies seeking to incinerate Victoria's excessive domestic combustible waste. Waste should be seen as an opportunity, not a problem. Beverley McArthur, Member for Western Victoria Licensed by Copyright Agency. You may only copy or communicate this work with a licence.
Discussion
LETTERS The new Member for Corangamite seems to have a strong orientation towards the environment. And despite a self-proclaimed fondness for water, a seemingly strong disorientation when it comes to working out whether Gellibrand is in the middle reaches or the bottom of the catchment (Colac Herald, November 20). Given that the IPCC's position is that the paltry three per cent of total carbon dioxide "emissions" attributable to humans is the primary cause for the warming we have seen since 1950 (but not before 1950), perhaps the member for Corangamite might like to explain to the paying public what the cause of the warming was between 1900 and 1950? Does this representative of the Australian Parliament want us to accept that although the rate of warming was the same over the entire century, that one mechanism was responsible for the first 50 years and humans somehow responsible for the second? Bernie Franke, Upper Gellibrand
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