OPINION
Mary Hackshaw
On the 22nd of February I had a pleasant surprise. A week and a half after widespread blackouts hit Victoria following a summer storm, cutting off power to 530,000 homes and businesses, we had a 38-degree day. Perfect conditions for the grid to collapse with the strain of people turning on their air-conditioners. After a quick shop at Woolworths followed by a visit to BWS next door to grab a few bottles of wine I chatted with the two twenty-somethings behind the counter about the conditions. The female pulled out her phone and showed me a large bushfire near Ballarat. I told her that power had been lost in a small town nearby.
Oh well, did that start things off! The female told me about her mother and how regular blackouts where she lives have forced her to purchase a generator. As for her, where she lived previously, she had gas cooking, so she could still cook even during blackouts. Where she is now is entirely electric, so she cannot even cook. I reminded her that gas connections to new homes are now banned in Victoria and that all new houses must be entirely electric. The Victorian Government is all-out trying to get households to ditch their gas cookers and go electric.
Then the bloke chipped in, saying how renewable energy simply does not work and that the earth’s climate has been changing for all of time. We discussed various phases of the earth’s climate over time and I was pleasantly surprised at his degree of knowledge. My preconceptions about a twenty-something-year-old male with long hair done in a plait down his back were entirely unfounded.
We are constantly led to believe that twenty-somethings are so concerned about climate change that they are even deciding not to have children. We see them protesting and calling for an end to the use of fossil fuels. It would seem from my conversation yesterday that these are just a noisy minority.
A piece in the Spectator discussed how the blackouts may finally bring young people to their senses when they find they cannot charge their smartphones and other devices.
For first-time power blackout sufferers, it won’t be the temporary death of their fridge or freezer worrying them. These days, most order-in a solution to their food problems or go to a local supermarket – backed up by diesel generators – to get a tub of ice cream on demand.
No, it is only the absence of mobile phones, iPads, and the like that might make the younger generations understand what nobody else is telling them: reliable energy is really important.
The recent blackouts might just be the reality check that Victorians need. As darkness fell one night my partner and I sat on our verandah in the semi-darkness and without a breath of wind we sang the song which goes, “Out on the patio we sit, and the humidity we breathe, we watch as the lightning strikes, this is Australia”.