Antinuclear

Inadequacy of Australia’s media reporting on environmental and renewable energy issues

What also isn’t included in any of the above articles is that China is also investing 2.5 trillion yuan, the equivalent of $US361 billion in renewable power generation by 2020. 

Environmental spin: An example of media disunity on renewable energy, Independent Australia,  Melanie McCartney 14 January 2017, We can’t keep ignoring the ginormous elephant that is renewable energy in our economic policy, writes Melanie McCartney. 

LAST SUNDAY, I surfed the ABC news website and clicked onto this headline:

‘China fights pollution: New environmental police squad to battle heavy smog’.

The article seemed a little threadbare. When this occurs I search further and ideally for an article in the country relevant to the article. I like to get more details this way. I decided to try something different this week and scanned the headline blurbs on the first Google page.

I noticed that all of the articles, bar two, started the same:

‘Officials in Beijing create a new environmental police squad in the latest effort to fight China’s persistent…’………

What also isn’t included in any of the above articles is that China is also investing 2.5 trillion yuan, the equivalent of $US361 billion in renewable power generation by 2020.

On 5 January, Fortune reported:

The investment will create over 13 million jobs in the sector, the National Energy Administration (NEA) said in a blueprint document that lays out its plan to develop the nation’s energy sector during the five-year 2016 to 2020 period. 

The announcement comes only days after Beijing, the Chinese capital, and other cities in China’s industrial north-east were again engulfed in hazardous smog, caused largely by coal-fired power generation. 

The NEA said installed renewable power capacity including wind, hydro, solar and nuclear power will account for about half of new electricity generation by 2020.

Personally, I was aware of China’s five-year-planning but not of the lofty renewable energy target above until I started to write this. The Turnbull Government’s energy policies look dismal when compared to this news. It’s not right that the media has missed this, when so many Australians, especially Indigenous Australians care and value nature and worry about the repercussions of our climate changing. China is the world’s biggest investor not just in energy but in renewable energy. Its citizens need to be able to breathe, just like the developed countries. The rest of the developing countries will follow too.

We can’t keep ignoring the ginormous elephant that is renewable energy in our economic policy. This is harming not just investment hopes within our country and overseas investors but also within our communities. The uncertainty and lack of long-term planning only opens us up to further exploitation by multinational corporations and or foreign countries. China is the world’s biggest producer and investor in solar energy now.

Australia still has a chance, together — not on an elitist path, but closer to an egalitarianism one. One that questions authority. If journalists can’t or won’t do it, we, the people, will have to. It’s the pioneering Aussie way after all.

You can read more from Melanie McCartney on her blog or you can follow her on Twitter@CartwheelPrint.       https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/environmental-spin-an-example-of-media-disunity-on-renewable-energy,9918#.WHlBFksjta4.twitter

January 14, 2017 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, media