Canberra Times Letters to the Editor: Step up on safety

Ms Cody did attend. We also had a follow-up meeting. She made some suggestions for minor improvements until a more permanent solution could be put in place, albeit traffic lights. She advised she would be speaking to Ms Fitzharris. We are still waiting for some sort of corrective action.

Meanwhile, construction of the 300-plus apartments is about to commence in Irving Street. This means numerous construction vehicles will be entering and leaving Launceston and Irving streets daily for the next two years.

There have already been a number of accidents and near misses, do we really need to wait until someone is seriously injured or killed before the ACT government steps up to the community's expectations and manages the risks?

J.Bodsworth, Phillip

While the RAAF has stopped using dangerous firefighting foam at its air bases, we are told, the damage has been done with aquifers, creeks, human health, domestic food production and native foods and animals affected in the NT.

Who was responsible for these chemicals? You guessed it, the Americans, in this case the 3M company.

The US were the clowns that used Agent Orange in Vietnam, too. How can the ADF in the past and now trust the word of foreign chemical companies and not test the product ourselves?

In relation to RAAF and army aircraft, even commercial aeroplanes, I can't recall any crash and burn incident at Australian aerodromes except for the odd Cessna-type civilian aeroplanes from time to time. RAAF and army accidents occur away from aerodromes in training areas or over unpopulated parts of Australia, not at air bases. The last fatal commercial accident was an Ansett Viscount that crashed in Queensland about 1963 and the only large jet crash in Australia was an empty RAAF VIP 707 that crashed off the coast into the sea, killing the aircrew due to the "gung-ho" pilot over-extending the aeroplane's capability.

So what is the point of all this firefighting training with foam for incidents unlikely to occur, at least in peace time? Perhaps RAAF firefighters should be cross-trained as Air Defence Guards to keep them busy.

Adrian Jackson, Middle Park, Vic

Thank you Alan Barron and Mark Sproat (Letters, December 4) for your entertaining letters about the non-viability of renewables. Better research would show Gavin O'Brien is closer to a sensible way forward.

While not so entertaining, the facts are roughly that genuine clean coal (carbon capture storage – if even practical) is four or more times the cost of "unreliable" renewables. The added cost of stored energy to make renewables reliable still leaves these at less than half the cost of CCS.

Supercritical Coal is not clean, and is no more than high-efficiency normal coal. Its cost is on par with reliable renewable energy today, but is unlikely to be able to compete in the near future.

The only way to justify the continued use of coal is to ignore climate change as being real – and even if one is not entirely convinced about this, and it takes 40 years for the truth to sink in like it did about smoking causing cancer, the "zero cost" insurance of moving to renewables is the only sensible option we have.

Thorium nuclear (molten salt) is one other possibility, and has only just fired up again after being ignored for four decades.

The move to renewables is not as some would claim, "like blowing your legs off". It's more like "keeping your pants on" and not exposing yourself unnecessarily to Mother Nature and being punished by her for being rude (pun intended).

Trevor McPherson, Aranda

As stated by James Allan and Peter Campbell (Letters, December 5), it is certainly true that emissions of CO2 generated by human activity have been influencing the Earth's climate. This began about 1760 with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, but has been most noticeable since about 1840 with the combination of increased coal burning and accelerating population growth.

Not coincidently, warming of the Earth's climate began to accelerate most noticeably about 1850, and the Earth has been warming – with the expected minor perturbations – ever since. The main greenhouse gas, CO2, has been joined by ever-increasing amounts of a much more potent warming gas, methane. The rate of release of methane into the atmosphere is expected to increase with time, especially with the increasingly noticeable thawing of the Arctic permafrost.

These basic facts of climate change are now accepted not just by the vast majority of scientists, but also by major institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, major insurance companies and banks, and multinational oil and mining companies, including BHP (which, among other commodities, mines coal), by the US Defence Department, and organisations such as the CIA and the FBI.

As Mr Allan writes, we don't know it all but we need to keep observing. However, I don't think we need to continue with the experiment mentioned by Mr Campbell unless it's about reducing our harmful effects on our one and only planet.

Douglas Mackenzie, Deakin

The report that fines for not voting are too low misses the point. It deals only with the people who are on the roll.

Enrolment should be automatic as citizens turn 18 and for new residents who own or lease property.

Without these measures, and given that 50 per cent of our national population was born or have parents born overseas and do not have the ingrained entitlement to select parliamentary representatives, one of the hallmarks of our system will fade into oblivion.

Michael Kirby, Castle Hill, NSW

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