Organizer of B.C. hospital protests, Kristen Nagle, recently claimed that you can't catch a virus

The fired intensive-care nurse also suggested that polio and Spanish flu were not caused by viruses, and that rabies arises from malnourishment and mistreatment

by Charlie Smith on September 3rd, 2021 

GEORGIA STRAIGHT

In a recent videotaped interview posted on YouTube by Bright Light News, Kristen Nagle described the origins of the September 1 protests outside B.C. hospitals.

CANADIAN FRONTLINE NURSES

The protests that took place outside B.C. hospitals this week were organized by a group called Canadian Frontline Nurses.

Its leader, Kristen Nagle, is a former neonatal intensive care-unit nurse who was fired earlier this year from a hospital in London, Ontario. This came after Nagle co-organized an antilockdown rally.

Nagle has some unconventional views on disease transmission

"You can't catch a virus," Nagle wrote on Facebook on August 15.

According to her, viruses "are found within to help us detox and get back to balance".

The Straight is reposting more of her comments below to provide context.

"What if everything you learned wasn't true?" Nagle asked at the start of the post. "Germ theory never been proven. Bacteria aren't bad guys and are actually essential to life. Polio wasn't cause by a virus and its near eradication wasn't due to a [vaccine]. Spanish Flu wasn't caused by a virus.

"Rabies is actually from malnourishment and mistreatment," Nagle continued in her post. "Mumps, measles, chickenpox are benign and part of childhood phases essential for development. Contagion has never been proven."

Nagle went on to write that our bodies are capable of healing.

"We were created divinely and perfect in God's image with no mistakes, therefore vit k or childhood immunizations are not only not necessary but harmful," she stated. "Food impacts [our] health. Emotions impact our health. We do not need pharmaceuticals."
In this interview, Kristine Nagle talks about her opposition to vaccine mandates.

BRIGHT LIGHT NEWS/YOUTUBE

Nagle hoped for a worldwide walkout

In a YouTube interview with Bright Light News, Nagle said the idea for the September 1 vaccine-mandate protests outside hospitals came from one of the group's members in Kamloops.

"We decided to make it a nationwide event for health-care workers and everyone, really, that is being affected by these mandates to take a stand," Nagle revealed.

Nagle said that after holding 18 months of protests, they needed to "make a huge visual impact to show the public that we are not for these mandates".

"We are for body autonomy, health freedom, medical freedom, informed consent," Nagle said, "and we thought it was time to make a bold statement that we need to kind of finally draw the line and hold the line because we know this is a slippery slope where this is going."

The goal was actually for a worldwide event, she revealed in her interview with Bright Light News.

Facebook post said real issue is "control"

After declaring in her August 15 Facebook post that people cannot catch a virus, she spoke about broader societal issues that concerned her in connection with governments' responses to disease.

"This has never been about health. But about control," Nagle declared.

"What if there were.people following the narrative faithfully, changed direction...would you ask why?" she added. "Ask what they know that you don't? Ask what made them make such a decision to jeopardize their career, reputation, relationships and livelihood? Would you have an open discussion to hear another side? Or assume you know it all and these people have all become crazy conspiracy theorists?

"Remember debate club?" Nagle continued. "They used to teach you how to debate something to win even if you disagreed. Debates were welcomed and encouraged. You learn, you grow, you do better.

"Are we not concerned of censorship? Cancel culture? Deleting of platforms and discussions? Eliminating ability to ask questions? Freedom of speech and thought.

"Are we not concerned that we're missing important information from experts? scientists? Real lived experiences? If they come after us...where do we draw the line? what else can they come after? Have we forgotten the art and importance of real debate? Its time to ask questions. To unlearn and relearn."

The post in its entirety

Read Kristen Nagle's August 15 post on Facebook.

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 Chile’s Indigenous Mapuche resist loggers and state control

  

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Ag deserves election focus, say hog producers

By Karen Briere

WESTERN PRODUCER
Published: September 2, 2021


Canadian Pork Council chair Rick Bergmann said he hasn’t heard agriculture mentioned at all and hopes party leaders will step up and recognize the importance of a safe and secure food supply. | File photo


Election ’21: Pork council wants African swine fever action plan to be at the top of the agenda for federal politicians

Canada’s pork producers say their industry and agriculture as a whole should have already been a focus of the current federal election campaign.

Canadian Pork Council chair Rick Bergmann said he hasn’t heard agriculture mentioned at all and hopes party leaders will step up and recognize the importance of a safe and secure food supply.

“I would think keeping Canadians fed and having food security would be a priority,” he said.

Instead, he said it seems like the industry is still being taken for granted.

The council last week released a list of election priorities it hopes will get some attention.

Chief among them is a $50 million pan-Canadian action plan on African swine fever. The federal and provincial ministers have had ASF on their meeting agendas for a few years now. Bergmann said the federal decision to use detection dogs at airports is positive but with decreased travel during the pandemic that risk was lower.

Now that travel is resuming, and the disease has been found in the Dominican Republic, he said the concern is rising again. There has been lots of talk on a full plan but now it’s time to mitigate the potential risk and deal with Canada’s wild boar problem, too.

ASF would cause a minimum hit of $24 billion, Bergmann said.

“It’s time for the rubber to hit the road,” he said.

The CPC also wants a business risk management program that works and Bergmann said it’s time for Ottawa and the provinces to agree.

“They’ve been at it for eight years,” he pointed out.

Canadian producers must be able to depend on their governments the way producers in other countries can.

The council has asked for Ottawa to establish a senior representative in Beijing to deal with trade barriers. China is the world’s largest pork importer but has delisted 65 percent of Canadian processors, said Bergmann. That must be rectified.

The pork industry brings in $5 billion in exports each year; that’s new money into the economy.

Bergmann also pointed out that the pork industry would like some equal treatment when it comes to the carbon tax. In Manitoba, for example, the tax on a finished hog is about $1.50 right now and would rise to $6.50 by 2030.

“That can make producers make a decision to step away from production,” he said.

Bergmann wonders why some parts of agriculture are “outside the penalty box” when it comes to the carbon tax but pork producers are not. He urged federal candidates to pledge to work side-by-side with industry to come up with solutions rather than penalize them.

The CPC has also called for a foot-and-mouth vaccine data bank to be established and help to gain greater access to skilled labour the industry needs.

Bergmann added that major world issues are taking centre stage right now but in a short campaign agricultural leaders have to step up and remind Canadian politicians that producers are the source of what all of society needs. Protecting that source is critical.

Flax processor to close in Manitoba

NATIONALIZE IT UNDER FARMER WORKER CONTROL

By Robert Arnason
WESTERN PRODUCER
Published: September 2, 2021

The Winkler plant converts flax straw into flax tow — the raw material for cigarette papers. The flax tow from Winkler was shipped in SVM's cigarette paper plant in New Jersey. 

| File photo

A flax-processing plant in southern Manitoba will shut its doors at the end of 2021.

Schweitzer Maudit, SVM, a materials company that manufactures papers, adhesive tapes, resins, nets and other products, has operated its Manitoba plant since 1985.

A company representative confirmed it will close in four months.

“We have made the decision to close our Winkler facility (which includes both sites of Winkler and Carman), with an anticipated closure date of Dec. 31, 2021,” the SVM spokesperson said in an email.

The Winkler plant converts flax straw into tow — the raw material for cigarette papers. The flax tow from Winkler was shipped to SVM’s cigarette paper plant in New Jersey


In late 2020, SVM stopped operating its New Jersey facility.

“(The closure) was driven by a key customer’s decision to source a different product that did not fit the capabilities of the Spotswood (New Jersey) location,” the company rep said. “Although SVM pursued alternative business models that would allow us to continue to operate our Winkler facility, we were unable to find an option that could successfully sustain our operation.”

SVM has already contacted farmers who supply the Manitoba plant with flax straw.

In 2010, the federal and Manitoba governments invested about $600,000 into an expansion of SVM flax processing in southern Manitoba. The company also invested $485,000.

SVM operates in Brazil, China, Europe and North America. In 2020, it reported revenue of US$1.07 billion.

Tornado latest challenge for young Sask. farmer

By Karen Briere
WESTERN PRODUCER
Published: September 2, 2021

A tornado caused considerable damage on Trenton Zakaluzny’s farm near Hodgeville, Sask., last week. | Trenton Zakaluzny photo

Debris was scattered for miles, grain bins punctured, equipment tossed and windows in most of the equipment and vehicles blown out

Trenton Zakaluzny’s plan to take over the family farm as his father eases up has been hit by one blow after another.

Two floods, a devastating fire last winter, this year’s drought and then last week an EF-2 tornado that destroyed most of the yard and equipment on the farm south of Hodgeville, Sask., all have the 25-year-old wondering if the dream will become reality.

“Between the fire and the tornado, whatever I have in the house is kind of what’s left,” he said.

Environment Canada’s preliminary assessment of the tornado pegged the winds at 180 km-h. Three other tornados were either confirmed or suspected last week.

The Zakaluzny farm was hardest hit. Debris was scattered for miles, grain bins punctured, equipment tossed and windows in most of the equipment and vehicles blown out. Two neighbours also experienced some damage.

Trenton’s dad Eugene was in the farmhouse when the twister hit. He looked out the window to see fuel tanks whizzing by.

“He went to the other window and bins were rolling through, sheds flying away,” said Trenton.

Fortunately Eugene wasn’t hurt.

Trenton had planted his first crop on his own this year, a quarter-section of green lentils. The farm includes 1,600 acres and the plan was for Trenton to slowly do more and more of the work. He said that seems impossible now.

“Pretty much everything that could get wrecked, did,” he said.

It has already been a trying few years.

He had just started on off-farm job in Saskatoon in mid-August after the drought made it apparent that the crops weren’t going to do well this year. He has a grain vac business that has also been slow.

The family had to repair the house after two years of floods and this past January, during the windstorm of Jan. 13, an electrical fire burned two of their heated sheds and destroyed equipment and vehicles inside them.

Zakaluzny doesn’t know what’s going to happen to this year’s harvest. He and his dad have no usable harvesting equipment and while neighbours are offering to help, he said they have their own harvest to do, too. | Trenton Zakaluzny photo

Trenton said he has lost most of his personal belongings in these disastrous events.

He doesn’t know what’s going to happen to this year’s harvest. He and his dad have no usable harvesting equipment and while neighbours are offering to help, he said they have their own harvest to do, too.

Support has come in the form of meals and offers to help clean the glass and debris that covers the farmyard.

A GoFundMe campaign organized by a friend has surpassed its original goal of $10,000 and continues to climb.

However, Trenton said the cost to actually replace everything will be so much more that he isn’t sure they can even try. Not everything was insured and personal items, such as photographs, can’t be replaced

.

The Zakaluzny farm was hardest hit. Debris was scattered for miles, grain bins punctured, equipment tossed and windows in most of the equipment and vehicles blown out. | Trenton Zakaluzny photo

“It can’t happen overnight; it takes years to build that up,” he said. “It’s tough to see it all go.”

That said, he refuses to say they will quit, only that they are “running out of options.”

Looking at the destruction in every corner of the farmyard is “too much.” The clean-up will take a long time, and he said it’s not like there is even a shop where equipment could be fixed. There are no tools or parts; they’ve been scattered for miles.

Everything that has happened in the last four years is starting to take its toll.

“Losing everything you have makes you want to take a step back,” he said, adding it’s particularly hard on his father.

“It’s not something you want to quit doing, but it doesn’t really leave him an option at this point in time. Insurance only covers so much,” he said.

CANADA
Exports to drop as crop shrinks

By Sean Pratt
WESTERN PRODUCE
Published: September 2, 2021


Lyle Kabatoff loads canola at the Odelein family farm near Quill Lake, Sask., that was destined for Cargill’s crushing plant at Clavet, Sask. There is concern that this year’s drought-reduced crop will mainly be used domestically, leaving foreign customers short of supply. | William DeKay photo


Canada’s crop exports are forecast to plummet 39 percent this year, leaving importers scrambling for product from alternative suppliers.

Total exports of grains, oilseeds, pulses and special crops are forecast at 36 million tonnes, down from 59 million tonnes last year, according to Agriculture Canada.

That would be the smallest export program since 2006-07 when Canada shipped out 35.9 million tonnes.

Production of all crops is expected to fall by 27 million tonnes due to drought.

That is in line with the satellite-based yield and production forecast for a 25 million tonne decline issued by Statistics Canada four days after the Ag Canada outlook.

Saskatchewan farm groups are calling on members of the Western Grain Elevator Association to eliminate administration fees and reduce penalties for the 2021-22 growing season.

“Many farmers’ yields across the Prairies will be well below their crop insurance coverage and they will be unable to deliver on even modest grain contracts,” the groups stated in a joint news release.

Farmers are not the only ones fretting about the short crop.

Jim Everson, president of the Canola Council of Canada, said exports are likely going to take it on the chin this year. That has to be making importers anxious.

Agriculture Canada is forecasting seven million tonnes of canola exports, down from 10.9 million tonnes last year.

Everson said Japan, the United States, China and Mexico will take the lion’s share of Canada’s vastly reduced export program.

“They will continue to be the key markets for canola in an environment where we don’t have the kind of supplies we’ve had in previous years,” he said.

Other customers will seek alternative suppliers or will be forced to substitute competing oilseeds.

Everson believes domestic crush should fare much better than the export side of the business.

Canola oil prices are sky-high due to robust demand from the recovering restaurant sector and the biofuel industry. That means attractive crush margins.

“We would expect processing to be robust through next year,” he said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts 9.5 million tonnes of Canadian canola crush, down from 10.4 million tonnes last year. Agriculture Canada is less optimistic, forecasting eight million tonnes.

Dorab Mistry, director of Godrej International, said the canola situation could be far worse than the yield and production numbers indicate because he has heard from his Canadian industry contacts that oil content is also dismal.

“That is really a worry,” he said during a presentation at a conference organized by the U.S. Soybean Export Council.

“The lack of precipitation and high temperatures have crimped the oil content of canola seed this year.

Agriculture Canada pegged wheat, durum and barley exports at 17.2 million tonnes, which would be about half of last year’s program for those three crops.

Daniel Ramage, director of market access and trade policy with Cereals Canada, warned that the jury is still out on how big the crop will be.

“It is still early in the harvest,” he said.

Ramage noted that the USDA is forecasting 24 million tonnes of Canadian all-wheat production, while the International Grains Council is using 24.5 million tonnes.

Those estimates are well above Statistics Canada’s 22.95 million tonnes and Agriculture Canada’s 20.2 million tonnes.

The trade has mixed views about the Agriculture Canada number.

“Some people in the trade are more optimistic. Some think that it is close to reality. There is a range of opinions,” he said.

Customers have plenty of alternatives for sourcing wheat but there are problems elsewhere around the world as well.

SovEcon is now forecasting 33.9 million tonnes of Russian exports, down from 38.5 million tonnes last year. Kazakhstan is also dealing with a short crop. And U.S. spring wheat yields are forecast to be down 37 percent.

Canada’s pea exports are expected to fall to 2.45 million tonnes, down from 3.65 million tonnes last year. Lentil shipments are forecast at two million tonnes, down from 2.4 million tonnes.

Mac Ross, director of market access and trade policy with Pulse Canada, said Agriculture Canada’s and Statistics Canada’s production estimates are generally lower than many analysts were forecasting.

But he has no doubt that exports will be way down compared to last year.

That could be a big problem for overseas buyers because Canada is a major player in pulse markets.

For instance, Canada has a 95 percent share of China’s pea import business. China may be forced to grant access to competitors like Russia and Ukraine.

Meanwhile, red lentil prices continue to rise in markets like India and Turkey, which both have short crops. India recently slashed its import tariff on lentils.

Those markets may have to turn to Australia but Australia is forecast to harvest 588,000 tonnes of lentils, down seven percent from last year. Private forecasters think it will be larger than that.

The one potential upside to moving a smaller crop is that there should be fewer logistical headaches for shippers.

That is in an ideal world. But today’s transportation system is far from ideal due to a container crisis that is holding many shippers of pulses and special crops hostage, said Ross.

“That more than anything has been the biggest thorn in our side,” he said.

 Physics

Quantum of solace: even physicists are still scratching their heads

Readers respond to an editorial about understanding quantum theory and defining the laws of physics

Richard Feynman (left) with fellow theoretical physicist Yang Chen Ning, pictured in the 1950s. Photograph: Science & Society Picture Library/SSPL via Getty Images

Letters

Fri 3 Sep 2021 15.41 BST

Your editorial on quantum physics (30 August) starts with a quote from Richard Feynman – “nobody understands quantum mechanics” – and then says “that is no longer true”. One of us (Norman Dombey) was taught quantum theory by Feynman at Caltech; the other (John Charap) was taught by Paul Dirac at Cambridge. Quantum theory was devised by several physicists including Dirac, Erwin Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg in the 1920s and 1930s, and Dirac made their work relativistic.

It is absurd to say that quantum mechanics is now understood whereas it was not 50 years ago. There have of course been advances in our understanding of quantum phenomena, but the conceptual framework of quantum physics remains as it was. The examples you give of nuclear plants, medical scans and lasers involve straightforward applications of quantum mechanics that were understood 50 years ago.

The major advance in the understanding of quantum physics in this period is a theorem of John Bell from Cern, which states that quantum physics cannot be local – that is to say that it permits phenomena to be correlated at arbitrarily large distances from each other. This has now been demonstrated experimentally and leads to what is known as quantum entanglement, which is important in the development of quantum computers. But even these ideas were discussed by Albert Einstein and coworkers in 1935.

The editorial goes on to say that “subatomic particles do not travel a path that can be plotted”. If that were so, how can protons travel at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern and hit their target so that experiments can be performed?

We agree with Phillip Ball, who wrote in Physics World that “quantum mechanics is still, a century after it was conceived, making us scratch our heads”. There are many speculative proposals in contention but none have consensus support.
John Charap Emeritus professor of theoretical physics, Queen Mary University of London; Norman Dombey Emeritus professor of theoretical physics, University of Sussex

 Whoever wrote this editorial does not understand what Richard Feynman meant when he said that nobody really understands quantum mechanics. Being able to make a smartphone, a nuclear weapon or an MRI machine does not require understanding quantum mechanics in the sense he meant – it requires the physical chops to set up the equations and the mathematical chops to find or approximate solutions to them. Any competent physicist has been able to do those calculations for at least 50 years. What Feynman meant was that, for quantum mechanics, nobody has the kind of intuitive understanding of what is actually happening in the world that physicists seek to gain. All we can do is shut up and calculate, or get lost in a never-never land of competing but empirically equivalent interpretations.

Perhaps Carlo Rovelli’s relational interpretation of quantum mechanics provides the intuitive understanding we’d like to have, although I rather doubt it, and I don’t believe Rovelli claims it does. Perhaps it even makes testable predictions that could distinguish it from other interpretations and thus is science rather than philosophy (I have no objection to philosophy).

It is just as true today as it was when Feynman said it in 1964 that nobody (or almost nobody) really understands quantum mechanics. And now, as then, a competent physicist does not need the kind of understanding Feynman meant to use the theory. Indeed, there’s no strong reason to believe that the human mind should be equipped to understand it at all. To quote another famous physicist: this editorial is not even wrong.
Tim Bradshaw
North Tawton, Devon

 While it’s highly probable that the position of my copy of Helgoland is where I shelved it, I won’t know whether its pages are printed or blank until I get round to reading it. However, from Prof Rovelli’s previous work, I agree “the fundamental truth is that it’s impossible to know everything about the world”, including whether this letter will be published and in what world.
Harold Mozley
York

 Given your editorial on quantum physics, is the strapline now “facts are relatively sacred” or “facts are sacred but relative”?
Simon Taylor
Warwick, Warwickshire

Climate change deniers are as slippery as those who justified the slave trade

Nick Cohen

Global warming sceptics should be hiding in corners. But still some defend the indefensible


Former Conservative party minister Nigel Lawson, photographed on 11 May 2016. 

Sat 4 Sep 2021 

No one seems as defeated as the global warming “deniers” who dominated rightwing thinking a decade ago. Like late 18th-century opponents of abolishing the slave trade, Lord Lawson and the claque of Conservative cranks who filled the comment pages of the Tory press are remembered today as dangerous fools – assuming they are remembered at all.

The billions of dollars spent by the fossil fuel industry on propaganda and its acceptance by know-nothing elements on the right caused incalculable damage. They might have followed Margaret Thatcher, who warned in 1989 of C02 admissions leading to climate change “more fundamental and more widespread than anything we have known”. The desire of business to protect profits and the vanity of politicians and pundits, who saw themselves as dissidents fighting the consensus rather than fanatics enabling destruction, helped to waste two decades of valuable time.

Every argument they advanced has been disproved, as much by the experience of everyday life as science. Journalists are advised: “If someone says it is raining and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out the window and find out which is true.” The world only had to look at the weather outside to know who was trying to fool it.

To pick from the dozens of examples in Richard Black’s history of the conspiracy theory (Denied: The Rise and Fall of Climate Contrarianism) , global warming is not a “swindle”, as a Channel 4 documentary informed its viewers in 2007. Glaciers and ice sheets are shrinking and the seas are becoming more acidic. If there was swindling, it was at Channel 4, as Ofcom suggested when it found the station guilty of several breaches of the broadcasting rules. It is not “erroneous” to assume that humanity is driving the climate catastrophe, as the Spectator assured its readers as late as 2017. The pace of man-made climate change is faster than anything in the Earth’s history and all attempts to invent other explanations have failed.

Viscount Ridley, who presided over the collapse of Northern Rock, and now dismisses the collapse of the planet in the pages of the Times, said climate change was doing “more good than harm”. We should adapt to a warmer Earth and celebrate the reduction in deaths from the winter cold. But the seas and icecaps cannot adapt, nor can cities threatened with flooding and countries facing desertification. The lights did not go out as we switched to renewable energy, as so many pundits said they would. And energy bills have fallen rather than risen, despite the assertions of the noble Lawson to the contrary. Rightwing denialism appears buried so deep in the dustbin of history it can never be recycled.

And yet there is nervousness among the impressively large number of Conservative politicians who are serious about pushing for net zero. They are pleading with their colleagues to understand the advantages to consumers and businesses that a determined remaking of the economy would bring. The Conservative Environmental Network is already in a fight with a small group of rightwing MPs, who claim “the poorest will pay the highest price for net-zero fantasies” (even though no measure is more likely to reduce fuel poverty than a government home-insulation drive). That battle will only intensify.

I put “denier” in quotes at the top of this piece because the enemies of science (and of us all) are endlessly malleable shapeshifters. Once they can no longer deny the existence of man-made global warming, they shift and keet on shifting so no one can ever pin them down. In this, they mirror the defenders of slavery 230 years ago, who created the modern world’s first corporate PR campaign and provided an example for all who have followed.

The comparison isn’t harsh. One day, the attack on climate science will be seen as shocking as the defence of human bondage. Indeed, that day should have long passed. They are overwhelmingly old men or, in the case of Lawson, a very old man. They grew up in a 20th century where the carbon economy was natural: the way the world was and would always be. Slavery was equally natural to the plantation owners and slave traders of Georgian Britain. It had always existed, everywhere on Earth.

The 18th century had its Viscount Ridleys who opined that slavery did more good than harm. In 1789, during the hearings for the first abolition bill in history, one witness told parliament that Africans wanted to be enslaved and “nine out of 10 rejoice at falling into our hands”. The pro-slavery lobby was as well funded as the fossil-fuel lobby, and as relentless. The Telegraph comment pages did not exist in 1789 so it commissioned The Benevolent Planters by one Thomas Bellamy to appear at the Theatre Royal in London’s West End. The play told the story of Oran and Selima, lovers who are separated in Africa. Their capture by slavers is a blessing. Far from being oppressors, kind slave owners bring the couple together in the West Indies and allow them to live productive lives together.

William Wilberforce was assailed by claims that if Britain abolished slavery, “our manufactures will droop in consequence, our land-tax will be raised, our marine destroyed, while France, our natural enemy and rival, will strengthen herself by our weakness”. Today, Nick Timothy, the man who destroyed Theresa May’s premiership, tells Telegraph readers the British will be forced into penury by “net-zero zealots” while other countries “break their promises” and profit from our naivety.

In the 18th and 21st centuries, as soon as one fake position was exposed, another took its place. The arguments change. The intent remains the same.

It remains an open question as to whether Boris Johnson secretly shares a denialist intent. Conservative environmentalists look on him with approval as he prepares to host the Cop26 climate change conference in November. He says all the right things, but the investment and political will needed to electrify transport, reduce meat eating and refit the housing stock are nowhere to be seen. Denialism is a shapeshifter. Its latest form may be a bombastic prime minister who promises the Earth but does next to nothing to protect it.



Nick Cohen is an Observer columnist

 

Australia Prepares For Offshore Wind
Boom

Reuters

September 2, 2021

By Sonali Paul (Reuters)– Australia’s conservative government introduced legislation on Thursday that could help clear the way for offshore wind farms to go ahead in a country considered to have massive offshore renewable energy potential.

The long-awaited legislation will set up a framework for building, running, maintaining, and decommissioning offshore electricity projects including wind generation and transmission cables, with environmental and financial safeguards.

“An offshore electricity industry in Australia will further strengthen our economy, create jobs and opportunities for Australians and enhance the delivery of affordable and reliable power,” Energy Minister Angus Taylor said in a statement.

Projects that could progress if the legislation passes, as expected, include the Star of the South wind project off the coast of Victoria, the Marinus Link transmission line from Tasmania to Victoria, and Sun Cable, which plans to deliver solar power from the Northern Territory to Singapore.

“This legislation is a key step to realizing Australia’s offshore wind potential and unlocking the associated economic benefits, including providing opportunities for the nation’s strong resources and maritime sectors,” Star of the South Chief Executive Casper Frost Thorhauge said in a statement.

There are more than 10 proposed offshore wind projects with a combined capacity of more than 25 gigawatts (GW), a recent government research report said, adding that with a coastline of almost 60,000 km (37,283 miles) with “very high wind resources”, it made sense to consider developing an offshore wind industry.

Onshore wind farms with a combined capacity of 7.4 GW supplied nearly 10% of Australia’s power in 2020, with a further 21 onshore wind farms with a total capacity of 4 GW due to start construction.

The legislation has widespread support from the opposition Labor Party, unions, and green groups, in stark contrast to most of the government’s other energy proposals, which are seen as supporting gas and coal to the detriment of renewable energy.

“Australia’s wind capacity has been likened to the North Sea – an area that’s leading the world in offshore wind generation. Investing in and growing this industry is a no-brainer for Australia, but it needs to be done right,” said Climate Council spokesperson Madeline Taylor.

(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2021