Energy Efficiency

After President Obama’s speech on nuclear disarmament in Prague, there is a clear invitation to all including Australia, to reduce the role of nuclear weapons as well as nuclear power stations.

Although Australia has been given the perception that we come under the protection USA’s nuclear umbrella, clearly we have been lied to again and again (most recently with DU (depleted uranium war heads) weaponry in our country); America has a long list of countries / rulers it has supported until such time as the circumstances changed.

Call me an optimist, but I believe that Obama’s decision to immediately and aggressively pursue US ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is legitimate and not necessarily a smoke screen or capitulation to divert attention.

Australia put this on the agenda by taking it to the UN General Assembly back in the 1990s. Will the ‘villains’ down ‘dirty weapons’ tools in answer to this conciliatory effort by Obama to see an international effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years is a question that may remain unanswered; however, Australia should take a lead in supporting this initiative, by cleaning up its act at home.

The troubling thing is, nuclear materials turned up last week in a police raid in Victoria, which proves inadequate control procedures and deficiencies in our workplace culture and those responsible for handling of uranium. Hopefully nuclear power will never see the light of day as the public becomes more aware of the costs and massive greenhouse gasses associated with the construction and commissioning of a nuclear power plant before it even cranks out one kilowatt of energy.

An increasingly short-tempered populace will not be party to the excesses of corporate wages or corporate ‘public works’ programs; the worn out platitudes and smoke and mirror ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ is not easy to prove as unemployment goes up, in spite of the billions of $’s thrown by the federal government.

Malcolm Turnball may be feeling like a leper at present; as a once financially broke – divorced – parent, I know all too well that money can – in the short term – buy a lot of love, but when the money runs out (or in my case, my kids twigged), the population will soon see that they are being paid their children’s future and the effect then will have a great fall-out.