Energy policy involves decisions which will only come good - or bad - decades into the future.
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Politics goes in three year electoral cycles.
It is important that any decision over the commissioning of a nuclear power station in Australia should take into account the full implications stretching a generation ahead.
This debate is too important to be left to the blowers of political hot air on both sides of the argument. Some rational economic thought is needed.
There is no doubt that global warming has to be tackled and tackled urgently. There is not a scientist of standing who doubts that burning carbon fuels has raised the temperature of the planet with possibly catastrophic effects.
So coal is on the way out. Not immediately, perhaps. The economic consequences of an abrupt closure of power stations are real - but be clear: it has to happen.
The question is: what should fill the gap?
Australia is a land of abundant uranium - the fuel for nuclear power - but also of abundant sunshine.
Nuclear power does not emit the main global warming gas, carbon dioxide. In that sense, it is a clean way of generating energy.
In another sense, though, it is very dirty. When nuclear goes wrong, it goes very wrong.
Twenty years after the explosions at reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power station on April 26, 1986, the World Health Organisation concluded: "A large increase in the incidence of thyroid cancer has occurred among people who were young children and adolescents at the time of the accident."
"Radioactive iodine was deposited in pastures eaten by cows who then concentrated it in their milk which was subsequently drunk by children."
Contemplate for a moment the consequences of that were it to happen in Australia. There is, of course, the human cost but imagine, too, the economic cost of the contamination of a part of the Australian food industry.
And that's before we contemplate the problem of nuclear waste disposal, the burying of highly dangerous substances for thousands of years.
Energy policy is notoriously difficult but according to the best research, the cost of solar and wind power is falling dramatically. Nuclear costs are rising.
The Fukushima disaster prompted the German Chancellor Angela Merkel - a scientist - to announce that Germany would abolish all its nuclear power stations by 2022. Pulling the plug on nuclear not only means closing down the power stations but also re-engineering the power grid so the cables and pylons lead from the new sources - the wind-farms in the Baltic and North Sea, for example.
It has not been easy, and Germany may miss the deadline. But if Germany can transition from an industry which provided a quarter of its electricity in 2011, how much easier for Australia, a country which has not even started to go down the nuclear route.
Energy policy is notoriously difficult but according to the best research, the cost of solar and wind power is falling dramatically. Nuclear costs are rising.
As a report for the IMF put it: "Solar and onshore wind turbines saw the biggest price declines among low-carbon energy sources between 2009 and 2017 .... making them competitive alternatives to fossil fuels and more traditional low-carbon energy sources such as hydro-power and nuclear."
Already Singapore is considering building a huge solar farm in Australia and taking the power of the sun through undersea cables.
If Singapore is going to use our sunny abundance, shouldn't we use it, too?
Germany showed imagination and courage. Now it's for Australia to go even further.