Follow Scandinavia into a fossil-free future

I have recently returned from holidaying in Europe and Scandinavia where throughout, but particularly in the Arctic circle, foodstuffs are hugely expensive, in limited supply and with no choice of variety available whatsoever.

It has made me extremely grateful to live in Australia.

Here, we take for granted the generous diversity of fresh meat, fish, seafood, fruit and vegetables – all sourced in Australia.

Then, as in every country I visited, we complain endlessly about the cost of living.

Now retired, I have been a single mum who has gone without over many years and driven the same cars for 20-plus years to provide for my son, so I know what it is to live on a tight budget.

I also know savings can be made by home cooking instead of the perhaps more convenient takeaways of little nutritional value.

However, I now own my home and have solar panels and a solar hot water system.

I discovered that, even discounting the current government’s subsidy for energy to every household this year, my power costs less than in Iceland, a country renowned for its very cheap thermal and hydro power due to its geography spanning two tectonic plates.

Flying into Vienna, I was absolutely gobsmacked by the sheer number of wind turbines as far as the eye could see, seemingly in the middle of farms without disturbing cultivation, and I also saw hundreds out at sea as well in Scandinavia.

The forest of wind turbines continues on land into Slovakia and Hungary.

The turbines have somewhat mesmerising languid grace as the blades rotate slowly in the air.

Fifty kilometres outside of Budapest there are fields of solar panels and again in Turkey I saw a similar sight.

In Oslo, you could hardly hear a car motor as the majority of vehicles including buses are electric.

It was a real revelation that a city could be so quiet.

They say travel broadens the mind, but really, with the rapid adoption of renewable energy in Scandinavia and the rest of Europe, I fail to understand why successive Australian governments have not done a lot more to fully support the new technologies and stop subsidising fossil fuels.

As for nuclear, we already have the biggest nuclear power plant; it’s called the Sun, it produces more than we could ever need, and we now have the technology to harness its energy cheaply.

Installation of community batteries would be a way forward.

We need to grasp this renewable energy future, because in Europe and Scandinavia, it’s already here!

Forward vision is required by our leaders.

We cannot risk going back.

Email, Apr 23
Lyndall Davis, Green Point