Trusting the science | opinion

Every time you go to the doctor, if you can get an appointment, and get the prescription filled and then take the tablets, you are trusting the science.

Every time you make a call on your smart phone, or use an app, you are trusting the science.

In the recent eclipse, visible in the Northern Hemisphere, lots of people trusted the science that predicted the date and time of the event. They spent gazillions of dollars on equipment that "the science" told them they could use to experience the event.

A report on Australia's COVID-19 response released only last week found that because we trusted the science on vaccines, we saved thousands of lives in Australia.

Every time we turn on the ignition in our cars we are trusting the science.

Every time we use Google Maps, or a similar GPS service, we are trusting the science.

So, one might imagine, it should not be hard to trust the science on climate change.

However, there are powerful and wealthy vested interests at play when it comes to talking about the need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and to actually move away from them. If you want to track their impact, then just follow the government and opposition policy decisions and the hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations to both major parties. You could also track the movements of staff between political offices and fossil fuel companies.

As an example, the proposal to frack for gas in the Beetaloo Basin in the Northern Territory was back in the limelight this week.

It was announced this week that the Northern Territory government had entered into a contract with the developers of the project to purchase gas from them for nine years from 2026. It was only 12 months ago that the same government gave the project the green light, at a time that the consensus of climate scientists and the United Nations was that no new gas and coal projects should be commenced if we are to have any hope of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The project still does not have all the approvals it needs, so entering such a contract seems somewhat premature and looks suspiciously like, having approved the project, the NT government wants to make sure the project appears viable. They may also be trying to put pressure on the federal government to give its approval to the project.

The Beetaloo Basin project does not have to go ahead. We do not need it. The proponents, and their allies in the political sphere want it, but that is not the same thing.

There are multiple proposals that could use renewables to achieve our energy needs and our climate targets.

Distributed power production and distribution, by harnessing rooftop solar and community batteries, could reduce the need for massive transmission lines that just reproduce the over centralised technology and approach of the past.

Saul Griffith's proposal to "electrify everything" would go a long way to reducing energy bills.

Some time back I raised the prospect of a community led and owned local power provider with Glen Innes Severn Council, a provider that could subsidise the take up of solar panels and batteries, as some other local communities have. This local provider could, with recent developments in smart meter technology, reduce our dependency on the grid and give great benefits at the local level.

It would give us control over our own power, and the profits would come home to us.

Maybe its time to revisit the idea.

Council, as the closest level of representative government to the community, is well placed to take the lead in developing this approach.

I wonder if anyone has the appetite?