Sydney Morning
Herald Wednesday 8/11/2006 Page: 6
SYDNEY'S coastline would need to be festooned with windmills if clean, renewable energy was to generate enough electricity to replace that produced by fossil fuels or nuclear power, the Prime Minister said yesterday.
John Howard was responding to a Herald/ACNielsen poll that found 91 per cent regarded climate change as a serious issue.
More than 60 per cent were unhappy with the Federal Government's response to the challenge and were willing to pay more in taxes and for services if it helped. Mr Howard said he found the results "quite unsurprising" and natural given the recent publicity on climate change.
He said he was particularly taken by the poll's finding that, when canvassed with energy options on how to best tackle global warming, almost 50 per cent opted for solar power. Mr Howard said he could understand why people preferred solar power, but it and wind power would never be mainstream generators of electricity.
"Solar is a nice, easy soft answer. There is a vague idea in the community that solar doesn't cost anything and it can solve the problem. It can't ...
"Solar and all these other things can make a contribution at the margins, but unless you want to have a windmill every few hundred feet starting at South Head and going down to Malabar ... you simply won't be able to generate enough power from something like wind in order to take the load of the power that is generated by the use of coal and gas and, in time, I believe, nuclear.
"In the end, if you look years ahead, there are only two ways of generating the electricity that this nation needs - either through the current methods of fossil fuel use or through a combination of that in a cleaner form but with nuclear power." Mr Howard said he understood what the opinion polls were telling him, but they would never dictate policy.
"I read what people say, I understand it, I'm sympathetic but in the end I've got to call it as it is, and calling it as it is means I have to say that solar and wind will not replace conventional power stations." Mr Howard doubted he would meet the former US vice-president Al Gore, due to revisit Australia soon. Mr Gore, who lost controversially to George Bush in the presidential election in 2000, visited Australia recently to promote the film An Inconvenient Truth.
"We ought to be realistic," Mr Howard said. "I don't know I'm at the top of his popularity list. I am, after all, a rather close friend of somebody he's not very keen on."
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