Advertising Cozy Cocoon Of Consultants And Recommended
The beneficiaries of the parade of multiple listings of government energy policies. With startling authenticity, most of these companies are small, parochial and inconsistent.
One of the most notable examples of the government's vision for our future, however, is the wind energy company, Infigen.
Infigen is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. Its activities include the largest wind farm in the southern hemisphere, and, judging from the publicity for the government, which has some people pretty happy.
But it is also a company that recently reported a loss of $ 34 million in the six months to last December and expects its financial statements to report a loss this year. Equally revealing, its very name (a mixture of infinite energy) gives the finger to reality.
No wonder in all this is a renewable energy company anyway. But think about symbolism. Everyone knows this government's vision for a clean energy future for Australia involves operating at a loss. But generally, in advertising you put your best foot forward.
Choose Infigen as a pin-up to the vision of this government to our energy future, is in fact an admission that the benefits or balanced budgets, means nothing.
There is another, deeper truth, however, it is clear from these ads. Ironically, the only city of the researcher is a person to make a statement flatly misleading.
Alex Wonhas leads CSIRO flagship energy transformed. At the end of a carbon tax announcement states that "the transformation we are about to undergo a transformation similar to the industrial revolution." Now, scientists are known for hyperbole. The standard test used to discuss the impact of their work are not the same as the standards they use in their work.
But this claim is the double standard to an unprecedented level.
The Industrial Revolution replaced the wind energy with coal, it has led to a dramatic increase in energy consumption, and it allowed the industry to produce quantities of manufactured goods more heavily and at prices considerably lower as was previously the case.
This contrasts with the results of the Australian proposal for the future of clean energy. Our revolution here, seeking to replace coal power with wind power, its apparent intent is to reduce energy consumption and it can increase the cost of manufactured goods. Today's debate is who should pay for it.
There is another important difference. The industrial revolution is a commercial phenomenon. The practice of people in private employment the great inventions of the ages 18 and 19, and his ideas were implemented by entrepreneurs who realized the potential to provide human needs on a massive scale.
In comparison, Australia's new clean energy future is a political phenomenon. The transformation promoted in the advertising is entirely a creation of politicians and intellectuals in other words, people are not practical for most, work in the use of the pubis.
Moreover, in sharp contrast to what happened in the industrial revolution, this transformation can be applied only if governments act to control and limit the choices of consumers are able to do. As the Industrial Revolution dramatically increased the freedom of choice in human society, the revolution of government is likely to reduce it.
The inclusion of this hyperbolic claim the property and its association with an authoritarian organization such as the CSIRO scientists is troubling. But as befits our age.
It seems we have a government whose members are too eager to hear what they want to hear, and everything is ready to put their blind faith and uncritical of the authority of experts.
And 'this combined with the mutual availability for researchers blurs the distinction between fact and argument, the desire to deal with computer models to empirical data and their tendency to confuse the reality of the current technological possibilities for the future, we have brought into this mess in relation to climate change policy.
There are many criticisms that can be done about these extraordinary government advertising. They were motivated by the fact that we need more information, but they contain little information. They used taxpayer money to provide free advertising for a very small group of companies, probably to the detriment of their competitors - something the Government Office for competitive neutrality complaints to chew over.
But the real sadness lies in what the ads tell us about the failures and too intimate links between the government and its scientific advisers. In his blind acceptance of scientific promise, tragically, the government has succumbed to the triumph of wishful thinking than common sense.
Thomas Barlow was a member of Balliol College, Oxford, and a scientific adviser to the Howard government.
