Friday 9 February 2007

Too Little Done Too Late?

The grip over the Murray water reserve is too little. The proposal for an emission level control system is too late. John Howard spent the last few years telling us that there's no such thing as Global Warming, and if he'd had his way he would have had ASIO make El Nino disappear, too.

And today, the bunfight over whether or not a 60km/h electric car can be brought into the country unless they pass Australian crash test standards. I say that my VMoto is not very crashtest friendly, yet it's street legal. These cars have about the same kind of range and speed as the scooter, yet they have a body around the driver. And WA is going to hopefully get fifty of the little beasts in and trial them.

I'm all for it but I suspect that the little electric broombrooms will not be popular for one important reason - no airconditioning... On the scooter I have natural aircon (and ask me what 46 degrees feels like on a VMoto I have first hand experience, why do you think it has a drinks holder?) but the little cars will be like hotboxes.

I applaud any step in the right direction. You've heard the murmurings of the utility companies and Government about how supplying green energy is going to be more expensive, and in a way, I agree that electric power needs to become as expensive to us as it is to the environment. When it costs half your salary to keep the air conditioner running on State electricity, people will start putting in solar installations if they want to keep cool.

So stand by for a bit of a shift in world economy. Can I give you my gentle readers a hint? Right now a solar installation for the average house will set you back between $15,000 to $25,000, and even at the cost of electricity today that is well worth it, the system will repay itself in ten to fifteen years, which coincidentally will reduce to five years as electricity prices go up in the very near future.

You just know that once more demand appears for solar installtions they will start costing up to $50,000 on the pretext of "demand," so sad but true, if there's a profit to be made the sharks will be there. I hope some of my ideas pointed out in the article which my last blog post refers to will see the light of day, because those ideas will make for some relief from those high prices. But your best bet is to get in now...

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