A challenging climate

Cooma Monaro Express
Thursday 1/3/2007 Page: 9

CLIMATE change and renewable energy has constantly been a hot topic on the Monaro and is this week's focus in our 2007 NSW state election coverage.

Wind turbines have been the subject of debate and REAL Monaro Chairman, Jim Litchfield, said he had serious concerns about them in the Snowy-Monaro and wanted to urge each level of government to strongly examine the negative impacts they'd have in the region.

Friends of Renewable Energy spokesperson Rashida Nuridin however, said all forms of renewable energy needed to be considered, including wind, because the Snowy-Monaro had a good wind resource and needed to be utilised.

The Cooma Monaro Shire is also on level three water restrictions following the Tantangara damn reaching as low as 6 per cent capacity in December.

Global warming, in particular, has been a hot topic in the alpine regions, with some worried increased temperatures would destroy the snow season. A CSIRO report released last year predicted the snowline elevation at Mount Kosciuszko - on September 1- could rise each year from its current average of 1460m to 1625m by 2020.

Furthermore, alpine areas experiencing 60 or more days of snow cover per year would decline by 38-96 per cent by 2050 and even a modest level of warming might lead to the extinction of the region's 200 alpine plant species.