Antinuclear

Mike Nahan from Institute of Public Affairs – Western Australia’s Minister Against Renewables

Are renewables doomed to failure in Australia?, REneweconomy By Giles Parkinson   3 May 2013  “………Mike Nahan  (Western Australia) is an interesting choice as energy minister. For supporters of renewable energy, he’s actually quite a frightening one.

The American-born Nahan is a former executive director of the conservative, pro-market, anti-renewable think tank, the Institute of Public Affairs, which is so intertwined with conservative policy making that many Coalition politicians refer journalists to the IPA for comment on issues such as energy and climate.

A collection of Nahan’s thoughts on climate and energy can be found on the IPA website as, like his contemporaries and successors, he was a prolific contributor to (mostly Murdoch-owned) newspapers. They give an interesting insight into his views on all things climate, energy and environment.

In 2005, he questioned the science of climate change. “Not only is the fact of global warming unclear, but a fully honoured Kyoto Agreement would have had only a trivial effect on temperatures,” he wrote in theHerald Sun.

In 2006, in the same paper, he hallelujahed the creation of the pro-nuclear and pro-business Australian Environmental Foundation, which has strong links to anti-wind farm groups. He also praised the expansion of the massive Hazelwood brown coal-fired power station, describing one of the country’s most polluting  power plants as “efficient, profitable and clean.”

And, of course, he doesn’t like the Greens, accusing them of being “Watermelons” – former socialists who were red on the inside and green on the outer. He even decried the focus of  Environment Day, saying such events should be a celebration of achievements – such as the fact that there were, he wrote in 2004– enough whales to support large whaling fleets.

Elsewhere, Nahan mocks the idea that the planet is depleting its resources, praises Conservative pin-up boy Bjorn Lomborg, and suggests that the global environment is actually improving rather than degrading. He also scoffed at suggestions that the Murray Darling Basin had water or salinity issues – both here and here.

Elsewhere, he dismissed the concept of “negawatts” – the idea promoted by the likes of the International Energy Agency that energy efficiency can play a critical role in decarbonising the world’s energy system, and to save money – as “activist jargon for subsidised energy conservation.” His preferred term was ‘megawatts’ – code for building more coal, gas and nuclear plants and burn as much fuel as possible.

Just in case you thought he might have evolved since being elected to state parliament in 2008, his views of wind and solar remain staunchly conservative, old school and just plain wrong. In a recent parliamentary debate, Nahan insisted wind energy required “one-for-one” backup by fossil fuel generators and did not reduce greenhouse gases, said solar cells were “hugely more costly” than polluting alternatives, and the only “low-cost, baseload, greenhouse-low energy” that existed was nuclear power.

May 3, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, Western Australia