Essay by Eric Worrall
Laws protecting Koalas and “the magnificent brood frog” have prevented a renewable energy company from clearing 500 acres 500 hectares of native vegetation in the Australian tropics.
Federal environmental laws ‘single biggest challenge’ for delivering renewable energy projects in Australia
By national regional affairs reporter Jane Norman
In far north Queensland, traditional owners, clean energy developers and conservationists had spent three long years sweating on this decision.
Depending on which side you believed, this development would either supply 150,000 homes with clean, green energy or destroy the forest habitat of threatened native species.
Late on Friday, the wait was finally over.
An email from Ark Energy landed in inboxes, announcing the company had “withdrawn the Wooroora Station Wind Farm proposal from the federal environmental assessment process.”
In other words, the proposed project was dead.
The Korean-owned developer had planned to clear more than 500 hectares of native vegetation next to the Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Area, home to animals including the koala and magnificent brood frog.
…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-22/environmental-laws-biggest-challenge-for-clean-energy-developers/103750830
This isn’t the only wind farm in trouble in Australia’s far north, WUWT recently reported on the Aboriginal campaign to block the Chalumbin wind farm, which would have despoiled part of the beautiful Australian Atherton Tableland.
Aboriginals are also playing their in other places to derail the green revolution, by demanding fair compensation from any infrastructure which intrudes onto their sacred lands. All those empty looking deserts where entrepreneurs hoped to install vast solar arrays are actually full of protected Aboriginal sites and places of special cultural and spiritual significance.
And let’s not forget farmers and rural people, who have spooked renewable developers with their ferocious campaign to prevent power lines from crossing their land.
I think when the dust settles we’ll all owe a vote of thanks to all of these groups, for their determined effort to stop greens from ruining the landscape with their ugly mechanical monstrosities.
We have to stop these green developers from exploiting the wilderness. The lesson is, if you don’t want a beautiful part of your landscape to be despoiled by greens, and you can’t find a local indigenous group who are prepared to fight for their sacred claims, nesting boxes for rare and endangered species and perhaps a few livestream webcams are your next best line of defence.
Update (EW): Click here to see Ark Energy’s description of Wooroora Station, along with a map showing the location – right in the middle of one of the most beautiful sections of the Atherton Tablelands. Ark Energy claims to have the support of locals for their project.
Correction (EW): 500 hectares, not 500 acres (h/t Tombstone Gabby).
Yet the coal power plants retirements/decommissioning in Western countries continues apace. And the War on Methane continues apace, making natural gas supplies much more expensive.
Reliance of Unreliables of course all but guarantees coming regular blackouts and higher prices.
So simply Green-on-Green delaying unreliables coming on-line only brings forward the date of likely rolling Blackouts and completely unaffordable electricity prices for middle and lower class consumers.
Not a matter of IF, but WHEN.
War on methane shows how scientifically illiterate greenies are. Methane is a GHG in the lab measured in the standard lab dry air. NOT in the real world averaging about 2% specific humidity. Both of its smallish IR absorption bands are completely overlain by much larger water vapor absorption bands. Easy to read overlay charts readily available on line for bookmarking by anyone not wanting to remain scientifically illiterate.
Good one, Rud. I have found our regulators depend on “facts” that are not actually applicable in real life.
Also notice that the news organizations and enviro NGOs now call natural gas “methane.” It happened so quickly that it had to be a coordinated effort, even faster than when “global warming” became “climate change.”
A small lonely victory.
Alas, Germany has begun clearing half of its famous Reinhardswald (of Brothers Grimm fame) to make way for 18 BIG wind turbines. Germany doesn’t have koalas, brood frogs, or Aboriginals to fret about.
That’s incredibly sad. I have fond memories of visiting the ancient forests of Germany. Who could have predicted they would be destroyed by people who claim to be greens?
So do I.
We lived in Munich for almost 6 years. My daughter was born there. Speak fluent German in three of its four dialects (SchwitzerDeutsch ist also eine Halskrankheit.) Visited weekends every part of Germany (and Austria, and Switzerland, and France, and Niederland, and Belgium, and UK…) Could never have imagined what has happened since there with the contagious EU green madness.
Not sure if this is the same rehashed story but if it isn’t, chalk another species saved by a lack of wind farms:
https://amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/20/tanya-plibersek-rejects-windfarm-proposed-for-biodiverse-queensland-forest
There are others. My guess is you already know this, but if not, here is a link to a story on Robert Bryce’s substack, plus another link to his Renewables Rejection Database. These defeats, along with the offshore wind defeats, are encouraging, but there is a long way to go to stop this lunacy.
https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/federal-judge-sides-with-osage-tribe
https://robertbryce.com/renewable-rejection-database/
Time for the Huns to make a comeback, and claim barbarian rights.
Salute!
I must violate one of my rules of behaviour -I do not like “I told you so.” I endeavor to avoid stating the obvious on so many things associated with the environmental rules, regs, mandates, and so on. But have been close to the rules, regs and codes and such for almost 40 years. Now I must say it. Just what do you want? And how are we supposed to get there? What sacrifices are you willing to make? How many $$ did you donate last year?
Early on with the climate change cultist approach to modifting Earth’s climate I could foresee conflicts with the many environmental groups we called “tree huggers”, the spotted owl folks, the people on the left coast concerned with salmon’s genetic progamming to swim up stream, and so forth.
So now the chickens come home to roost. I hope the “tree huggers” win out.
Gums opines…
Conservative Texas is the state leading the US in combined wind and solar energy, and they are proud of it!
https://www.kxan.com/weather-traffic-qas/texas-leads-the-country-in-combined-wind-solar-renewable-energy/
Who’s “they”?
from that site:
“Climate change activists point to solar and wind energy as reliable sources.”
reliable?
Site is NBC in Austin. Worse than Wokachusetts. Nuff said.
Reminds me of a Dave “Iowahawk” Burge comment: “Austin without Texas is Berkeley, Texas without Austin is Oklahoma”.
ZPMs (Zero Point Modules) is the way to go!
Who need trilithium crystals?
(A couple of Sci-Fi references there.)
Fun thing. If you go to the pure energy chapter of my ebook The Arts of Truth, I actually cover ZPMs as there is an issued US patent. Unfortunately, the patent is still sci-fi. The chapter also covered five other equally ridiculous fraudulent claims. all bigly publicized, all obviously fraudulent. Two of the other five got serious federal funding.
reliable? – yes you can rely on them making your electricity generation unreliable!
Yup. And ERCOT almost collapsed and a lot of people would have died in Feb two years ago because of it. Probably not something to brag about as at Kxan.com.
So, I checked. kxan.com is the website for NBC in Austin. Deep blue college town stupidity on full display. NOT conservative TX in general.
BTW, Houston is almost as bad as Austin. Paxton just got Houston’s ‘guaranteed minimum income’ Harris County giveaway stopped, at least temporarily.
“‘guaranteed minimum income’”
Which someone has to pay to their employees… or NOT pay if they don’t employ.
Yep, and Texas and their citizens got lots of federal subsidies to build unreliables. Lots of PRIVATE land in Texas to put that crap on.
What was the last scam that transferred wealth from the federal government to Texas? The saving and loan “crises”?
Heck BOTH of those transfers have nothing on Brandon, Schumer and Pelosi paying off the debts of every Blue state because “China Virus”. Nothing but a scam.
“Depending on which side you believed, this development would either supply 150,000 homes with clean, green energy or destroy the forest habitat of threatened native species.”
Well, sounds like the project would definitely destroy the forest habitat but only theoretically supply 150,000 homes. Sometimes. For part of the day some days. When it’s windy but not too windy.
PS Do these homes already exist? If so, they already have power. (Unless a reliable source is going be shut down to be “replaced” by green-dream pinwheels.)
Theoretically supply theoretical homes sometimes. Yup. Green thinking explained.
We know from at least two generations of experience that the “homes” are irrelevant. It’s all about the federal and state subsidies.
Fire up all fossil fuel and nuclear generators, build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators, remove all wind and solar from the grid.
Eric,
Are we talking 500 acres, or 500 hectares, 1,236 acres, call it two square miles? (Both are given in the article.)
I would think that Australia being on the metric system, it is 500 hectares… which is a little less than 2 sq mi, 500 acres is a little under 1 sq mi
Slight correction, 500 hectares is a little under 1 sq mi. By definition of the acre and statute mile, 640 acres is 1 sq mile – 1 acre is 10 square chains (chain = 66 feet) and 1 statute mile is 80 chains. 80**2 = 6400, 6400/10 = 640.
One hectare is 10,000 square metres, near enough 2 1/2 acres.
So, 500 hectares is around 1.250 acres.
That’s just under 2 square miles at 640 acres / square mile.
Ahh, the joys of having been in high school when we switched over to the metric system.
Ah the joys of having been in high school and learned math and science rather than being indoctrinated.
The funny thing is that we used the SI system in Physics and Chemistry from the start of first form (Year 7 these days).
Being able to automatically convert between Imperial and Metric units came largely through Agriculture. Converting between pounds and kilograms, acres and hectares, gallons and litres, points and millimetres (rainfall),miles and kilometres, and Fahrenheit and Celsius was needed to relate to our own families, and because most of the text books still used Imperial units.
We used to think the maths and science we did at high school was difficult – then we got to university 🙁
Hectares it is. Thanks Tombstone Gabby 🙂
G’Day Eric,
That’s what I was afraid of. The wife and I were in that area in 1970. In fact, we listened to the Anzac Day service from Canberra while at the Curtain Fig Tree. Beautiful.
It will be a sad day if that much land is vandalized.
Thank you gentlemen:
I ‘cheated’, I used an online conversion site.
They don’t want to solve problems. They want to be problems. I don’t care if they ever build their industrial sized paper weights. But it is funny to watch them get frustrated by their closest allies.
“…this development would either supply 150,000 homes with clean, green energy…” How on earth can any number of windmills supply even one home with electricity all the time it is needed? These green freaks are truly sloppy writers and equally ignorant.
So called ‘environmentalists’ don’t care about the innocent men, women and children whose environment is ruined and health impacted from trespassing noise-both audible and inaudible from by industrial scale wind turbines. Why would anyone expect them to care about animals?