As emergency workers assist South Australians with the fallout from a historic storm that knocked down multiple power lines, causing a blackout across the state, national environment organisation Friends of the Earth say the storm is a wake up call to act on climate change and disaster preparedness.
“Playing politics while South Australians deal with an unprecedented natural disaster is dangerous and the community expects better. The facts are that climate change is set to increase the number of extreme weather events, yet ideologues have wasted no time in blaming renewables for the state-wide blackout" said Cam Walker, Friends of the Earth's campaigns coordinator.
“We believe the community will see the anti-renewables comments of MPs like One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts as little more than grandstanding and cheap politics.”
A recent Climate Institute report found that Australia is unprepared to deal with extreme weather as the number of extreme events such as storms increase as temperature rises.
“Claims that renewable energy is to blame for the impact of one of the largest storms experienced in South Australia follows a series coordinated attacks on renewable energy in South Australian media” said Mr Walker.
“Analysis of the National Electricity Market shows wind generators were providing reliable renewable energy at the time the storm hit and were ordered to shut down alongside all other generators”.
“Fossil fuel backers will do anything to stop our transition to 100% renewable energy and are happy to sacrifice our climate and thousands of regional jobs in renewables to do so" said Pat Simons, Friends of the Earth's renewable energy spokesperson.
“Additional distributed energy, like wind solar combined with energy storage, will make our energy system more resilient than relying on polluting fossil fuels”.
"Using an extreme weather event to blame renewable energy, a key solution to climate change, is absurd and dangerous."
Further comment
Pat Simons
0415 789 961 | (03) 9419 8700
Yes 2 Renewables CleanTech Jobs Coordinator
Cam Walker. Campaigns co-ordinator. 0419 338 047