As a reader and subscriber to the Melbourne Age for more than fifty years I sent the following angry letter on 8 August. The letter was in response to an article by Chris Uhlmann on the decision of the Australian Energy Regulator to sue four South Australian wind farms over the blackouts in 2016. Reneweconomy noted that: “there was the effort of Chris ‘I was right and I was the victim’ Uhlmann, now at Nine Network and in Nine papers, still warning of the lights going out if we don’t slow down on renewables.” As I have been angry over other aspects of the media on climate change, though much more with the Murdoch media, I decided to add my ‘two bobs worth’ and sent the editors the following.
“Dear Sir, As a rusted on reader of the Age for most of my life I must express my disappointment with your front page story by wind farm opponent Chris Uhlmann (The Age 8.8) The climate emergency has been with us for some time although the penny has yet to drop in the halls of power and the mass media.
Without a rapid transition to renewable energy – read wind and solar farms – we are all in diabolical trouble and facing an existential crisis. Only a handful of politicians and few in the media appear able to grasp the concepts of inertia in the climate system or of tipping points and feedback loops. Only the articles by Peter Hannam, a few other journalists and the occasional well informed comment in the letters column, have given us some hope and kept us sane.
I have waited some time (read years) in vain for your front page headlines alerting readers to the climate crisis. As Greta Thunberg put it: “The main solution, however, is so simple that even a small child can understand it. We have to stop our emissions of greenhouse gases.”
This means that we need a rapid expansion of wind farms and other sources of renewable energy and storage. It is no longer a question of whether it is done but how it can be done as quickly and as seamlessly as possible. Bureaucratic and political opposition with inappropriate legal action and the cheering of such in the media are the opposite of what is desperately required. Yours etc.”
It seems most unlikely that the Age will print the letter, but even if they do I will probably abandon my subscription although I refrained from threatening such in my letter. Examining the diatribes and propaganda that flow from the Murdoch rags is now high on the agenda.