THE time for talk is over.

Bay Post
Friday 9/2/2007 Page: 10
Editorial opinion

After a decade of dire warnings, and with stark evidence now in our faces, we all have to take action on climate change. That means everyone. Individuals can conserve energy by switching off lights and appliances, walking or cycling to the local shops instead of driving, pooling cars and making informed choices when it comes to both spending and voting. Choosing products that have not involved huge amounts of energy to manufacture will, in time, make a difference.

And voting for politicians who can deliver more than hot air on climate change will also make a difference - a lot more quickly. If the best the Prime Minister can come up with as a solution for climate change is nuclear energy - a costly, dangerous and resource-hungry alternative - we really need to ask whether he is the best person to lead us into this time of peril.

The renewable energy sources we have in abundance in this country are sunshine and wind, yet apart from one recent and very hasty commitment to pursue solar power, there has been little by way of Government support.

And it was only last year the Federal Government put the kybosh on a wind farm in Victoria because there was a one-in-100-year chance the rare orange-bellied parrot would fly into its turbines. That decision has since been overturned. We deserve better than this ad hoc approach to what is potentially the biggest threat to our existence in living memory.

If you want to play a part, be on Broulee's South Beach at 12.30pm on March 17 and join the Clean Energy for Eternity campaign. The future is in your hands.

Wind Works

• ON the subject of climate change, more or less, it was interesting to find in a UK newspaper a story about the granting by the UK Government of a licence to build the world's largest offshore wind farm in the Thames estuary.
• Twenty kilometres off the coast, it will have 341 turbines. Another, with 100 turbines, is proposed further south. They'll save the atmosphere from a couple of million tonnes of carbon dioxide that would be emitted producing a similar amount of electricity and provide power for two million homes. It is estimated that within 20 years 20 per cent of Britain's electricity will be produced by wind power. It might be added, that 75 per cent of France's electricity is produced by nuclear means, with a lot of the rest coming from water power.