Tony Haymet's article ''How a hurricane shamed our energy policy'' ( Times2, September 25, p5) points the way to a sustainable future. I enjoyed the analogy between ''Direct Action'' - weasel words if ever there were - and the abolition of garbage disposal fees for restaurants.
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He mentions solar collectors tracking the sun to keep power levels up late in the day, something we should do in large- scale installations in Australia. Importantly Australia spans a vast east-west distance and an array in the west could supply the east with peak power in the evening, while an array in the east could provide morning peak power to the west.
Unfortunately, we have a government either in the pockets of the coal industry or collectively and individually ignorant - probably both.
Government members are in need of education about science but seem wilfully resistant (the science minister being the exception - oh wait).
I am but one of many itching for the opportunity at the next election to rid us of these buffoons so we can get our policies back on track.
However, at times the article appeared to confuse power and energy. For example, when referring to 4781mw (sic) delivered to customers, the context reveals that this must be referring to energy delivered of 4781 megawatt-hours (MWh) i.e. an average rate of supply of energy (power) of say 700MW, kept up for about seven hours.
Terry Werner, Wright
Tony Haymet stated that California is booming when the opposite is the case. A large part of its economy and businesses are leaving the state in droves. Texas energy has created some 200,000 new jobs over the past decade, while California has barely mustered 20,000. Ordinary Californians bear the brunt of green policies, paying almost 40 per cent above the national average for electricity and theirs is much cheaper than ours in NSW.
He also made a ridiculous claim that California has escaped the tyranny of the dirtiest fossil fuel when, according to data for 2013, the latest available, 7.81 per cent of California's electricity is coal-fired, almost 30 per cent is imported (much coal-fired), 44.25 per cent from natural gas, a fossil fuel, with just 18.87 per cent from renewables. It pays to check, doesn't it?
He produced a story about not collecting garbage from restaurants and throwing rubbish in the streets and how that was similar to rescinding the carbon tax which made no sense at all! He should take time to sort his ideas out. It is obvious the truth is not an important feature of articles supporting renewables.
J. McKerral, Batemans Bay, NSW
Buses key to light rail
It sounds like the ACT government is falling into the well-used white elephant trap by assuming that ''if we build it, people will come'' (''Light rail off track on bus numbers'', September 24, p1).
The key to successful public transport is that it is so convenient it becomes the default option.
This requires not only good trunk services (as in the light rail and intertown bus services) but also good feeder services, whatever their mode or means of delivery, so that when the light rail does eventuate, it is necessary and welcome because it is the only way to carry the load. To achieve this, it is necessary to work on the bus service now, by setting enforceable minimum standards of service.
To make the service usable and attractive, there should be at least one bus every 15 minutes on every route between 5am and 1am seven days a week, with a skeleton all-night service (half-hourly on Friday and Saturday nights, hourly on other nights, with good connections).
Conformance to standards should be reflected in the fare system. If all services in a journey meet the standards, a normal fare is payable.
If the frequency of any leg is half that of the standard (eg, half hourly), the journey is free. If it worse than that (eg, hourly), the passenger is paid at least one normal fare to travel.
David Walker, Ainslie
The article ''Light rail off track on bus numbers'' (September 24, p1) contains both actual travel numbers recorded by ACTION and ''projections'' by the Capital Metro Agency. Obviously, the two sets of figures are not directly comparable but a useful exercise is to compare them with the actual capacity ACTION provides on the Gungahlin-City route.
According to the latest ACTION timetable, 66 bus services are provided each weekday morning between Gungahlin and the City - 16 between 6am and 7am, 27 between 7am and 8am and 23 between 8am and 9am.
The timetabled journey time is 21 minutes. Assuming the seating capacity of each bus is 50 passengers, that equates to 3300 passenger seats available between 6am and 9am, each weekday morning. ACTION figures indicate the average passenger load for this period is 2570 - about 80 per cent of capacity!
Capital Metro ''assumes'' a passenger load of 3500 some time after the start of the tram service - albeit between the hours of 7am and 9am - as part of the justification for the trams. However, by minor adjustments to the current ACTION timetable, the ''assumed ''passenger loading of Capital Metro can be satisfied by ACTION buses!
Why, therefore, do we have to proceed with this white/green elephant of a tram system?
If we are to have ''greening'' of the public transport system, why not convert the Gungahlin-City section of ACTION operations to trolley-buses - pollution-free, quiet (for both those inside and outside) and much, much cheaper, simpler and more flexible than trams?
Paul E. Bowler, Holder
New dawn in Fiji
In 1986 Pope John Paul II called Fiji ''a symbol of hope for the world''. Nearly 30 years later, the Fijian people exercised their democratic right and overwhelmingly returned Frank Bainimarama to power. Is this new dawn a sign of new hope?
Perhaps not. A year after the Pope's famous words, the then Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka launched a military coup against the elected government. While Rabuka won subsequent elections held in 1992, he has found ruling through a parliamentary system difficult as his government suffered through infighting and factionalism.
Rabuka eventually lost the elections in 1999.
It will be interesting to see what happens to a democratically elected Bainimarama government. Can he provide much needed meaningful reform, or will history repeat itself?
A. Chan, Chisholm
WorkSafe ACT slow to address concerns
The article ''More injuries after safety report'' (September 24, p2) about the rise in serious injuries on ACT construction sites, highlights the worrying figures that the ACT in 2012-13 easily had the highest rate of serious injuries of any state or territory in Australia. CFMEU ACT secretary Dean Hall places the blame for the poor figures squarely at the feet of the ACT Master Builders Association and the employers. Maybe he is right, but possibly the blame should be shared around a bit.
In January 2013, at the time of a review into safety on construction sites, I sent an email to the then minister, Simon Corbell, detailing safety issues I had come across on residential building sites and roads.
I was very disappointed that I never received any response from the minister. As my comments were only of a general nature, I only expected a one sentence reply. Then in October 2013, I received a phone call from the ACT work safety commissioner telling me that the minister had passed my email to his office for a response.
He apologised for taking so long to contact me. Nine months later - really.
More recently I emailed WorkSafe ACT about serious safety hazards and unsafe work practices in a workplace. It took three emails over two weeks to get them to acknowledge they had received my original email. Just on three months have passed and I am yet to hear back from WorkSafe addressing my concerns. The unsafe practices continue.
Workplace Safety and Industrial Relations Minister Mick Gentleman is quoted in the article as saying, ''The government takes the safety of workers within the ACT seriously and wants no member of the community to fail to return home from work.'' I'm sure it does, but unfortunately Mr Gentleman, you will be the one to cop the blame if a serious injury occurs due to your staff failing to take action about known safety hazards.
A. Quinn, Palmerston
You're out of the limelight, so just get over it and behave
It is very uninspiring to hear our former leaders, on their fat pensions, bagging each other out all the time. This discordant fugue is an earworm.
We have the never-ending Gillard-Rudd saga, with variations on the theme from Peter ''I could have won the 2007 election'' Costello and John ''I don't think so'' Howard, with persistent echoes from Keating and Hawke. Could they just get over it?
Any legacy worth defending should not require the ritual humiliation of a defeated rival.
Heather Crawford, Evatt
Real forces behind terror
Z. Kovacs (Letters, September 18) says he's sickened by the moral relativism of letter writers to the Canberra Times, whom he accuses of not understanding the wider world where ''children are being beheaded in the street''. I thought at this point that he might have been talking about the 524 Palestinian children murdered in recent weeks by Israel's barbaric savagery, but apparently not. Instead he concludes that the West not only has nothing to answer for, but that it is ''ethically right and morally right to the deepest cores of our souls right to pursue and destroy these slavering [Islamic State] savages''. I used to think like Kovacs. I railed against what I saw as the gutless moral relativism of ''trendy left'' opponents on the war against Saddam in 2003, who seemed hell-bent on ignoring the lessons of World War II about appeasement.
But then something funny happened. Scandalised by the fact that it became clear that we had been lied to about Saddam's WMDs, I started to wonder deeply about why this lie had been perpetrated. This led me down the rabbit hole of why so many of our world events happen. Coming out the other side, I realised that prior to 2003, I had actually been in a long TV-induced coma!
Put simply, I woke up to the fact that the WMD lie was not an isolated untruth, but just another example of the way our world works and how it has worked for more than a century. Yes, there are certain extreme Islamic tribalists engaging in 7th-century forms of revenge against their enemies. But these petty thugs could be destroyed in the blink of an eye if that was the desire of the powers that run our world. But, as George Orwell warned us in 1984, those controlling interests have no desire for peace, only for money and power.
The aim of the controllers of these events is to perpetuate constant war and exploitation of the weak and vulnerable - and to use their power over the media to divert attention from what has really been happening.
Kovacs' misdirected outrage demonstrates how effective they are. As much as it may be hard for Kovacs to swallow, every warring conflict and terrorist incident in the world today (many of which are also fake) are proxy conflicts. The real terror of our age can be seen in Dresden, Hamburg, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo, Hanoi, Chile, Lebanon, and now 9/11, Bali, London, Madrid and, of course, over and over again in Palestine.
On any fair assessment, it is we who are the barbarians! Just like Kovacs, I prefer Bach to religious terror. But unlike him I'm no longer blind to the fact that there is no doubt that when it comes to barbaric terror, the US, Israel and Britain, and their EU goons, are the real forces behind this terror. Our lap-dog government and Prime Minster are either too frightened or just too stupid to admit the truth.
Chris Williams, Griffith
Learn from history
In determining how to manage the possibility of terrorism, it is always instructive to learn from the past, so as to avoid being doomed to repeat it. Internment without trial of suspected republican terrorists in Northern Ireland nearly half a century ago helped radicalise a generation. Even after internment, the memory lived on for decades and helped recruit to the IRA and its splinter groups.
More subtle and longer-lasting institutional discrimination, and the daily experience of anti-terrorism legislation, while potentially justified on security grounds, nonetheless helped ensure a steady stream of recruits for the following decades. More recently, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, ''collateral murder'' and so on have helped recruit to extremist Islamic groups. You can create potential terrorists by mistreating a particular group. Governments need to be very careful to ensure that their actions are not counterproductive.
Peter Marshall, Captains Flat, NSW
Royal riposte
A riposte, from King Henry IV Part II, to Bruce Haigh's invocation of Shakespeare (''Once more unto the breach, dear friends, one more'', Times2, September 25, p5): But rather show a while like fearful war, To diet rank minds sick of happiness And purge the obstructions which begin to stop Our very veins of life …
We see which way the stream of time doth run And are enforc'd from our most quiet sphere By the rough torrent of occasion …
W.A. Reid, Crace
Facts on farming
According to Christopher Smith (Letters, September 24), ''only a small portion [of Australia] has been cleared for farming''. The facts say otherwise. When Australia was first settled by the British in 1788, about 34 per cent of the continent was covered by forest. That figure is now about 16 per cent, and this includes plantations of both native and non-native species (source: Australian Department of Agriculture). The facts also indicate that the Barmah forest is entirely natural and the Pilliga forest is almost entirely so.
Mr Smith also alleges that ''tree cover is increasing all around the world''. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the world was in 2005 losing about 13 million hectares of forest, including 6 million hectares of primary (native) forest yearly.
Yes, wheat yields have generally risen in recent years, partly as a result of the breeding of higher-yielding and disease-resistant strains, but also because of the use of enormous amounts of fertilisers which have long-term detrimental effects on the soils.
Douglas Mackenzie, Deakin
TO THE POINT
LOUDER THAN WORDS
When I squeeze IS it morphs into a dollar sign, when I let go it pops back as US. Telling something?
Chris Klootwijk, Macarthur
HIGH-STAKE FASHION
What the devil have people got against banning the burqa and niqab? Surely, particularly in the stressful times we are living in, society can see that they are security hazards, and have no place in the open society we accept and enjoy as normal in Australia.
Frank Scargill, Macarthur
HOT AIR, COLD COMFORT
Maureen Blackmore (Letters, September 25) is deluded about large wind turbines. As James Lovelock, the scientist who popularised the Gaian systems' view of the Earth, states in his book The Vanishing Face of Gaia: ''Europe's massive use of wind as a supplement to base-load electricity will probably be remembered as one of the great follies of the 21st century.''
Murray May, Cook
VEILED REFERENCE
I would be most interested to know from what order of ''burqa wearing'' Catholic nuns Graham Macafee (Letters, September 25) received his education. I was educated by the Mercy and Dominican nuns in the 1950s.
At that time their habits included wimples, veils, and thick leather belts on which hung large rosary beads and a silver crucifix. Their entire face was visible, unlike the women who wear the burqa.
Judith-Ann Sjostedt, Higgins
ALBANESE NOT FIRST
Anthony Albanese's appointment as Labor's official spokesman on cities is not ''the first appointment of its kind'' (''Labor to tackle 'drive-in-drive-out suburbs' as Anthony Albanese appointed party's cities spokesman'', canberratimes.com.au, September 24). That distinction falls to Tom Uren, whom Gough Whitlam appointed opposition spokesman on housing and urban affairs in 1969, and Minister for Urban and Regional Development in 1972.
Michael McCarthy, Deakin
UNLIKELY PROBE
So true Mr Book (Letters, September 25). As for your last paragraph canvassing a formal investigation into parliamentary entitlements: ''As if''!
Chris Carder, Spence
PART IN OUR DOWNFALL?
So Tony Abbott said ''the world was racked with problems, but all could be overcome and Australia will always play its part.'' He didn't mention climate change, ocean acidification, sea level rises, loss of biodiversity, [yet] we need a liveable planet.
David Denham, Griffith
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