Definitely no power

When the productive have to ask permission from the unproductive
in order to produce, then you may know your culture is doomed.
- Ayn Rand

You may have heard about the cancellation of a hydro electric project on the Mokihinui River in the Buller Gorge—what would have been an 85MW station, enough to power several thousand homes or several dozen places of production. (Remember production? It’s that thing that puts food on the table and pays all the bills.)

But like virtually every other large energy project planned in recent years—Project Aqua, Project Hayes, Project Every-Other-One-You-Can-Think-Of—it’s not going ahead. It’s not going ahead because folk who fly into the remote valley in helicopters to walk it objected to it being built, objected to it enough to make Meridian pull in its heels, drawing the now obvious conclusion from energy producers that this now represents

“the death knell for large hydro schemes.”

What now then?

Well, if I may continue a well-worn theme of previous posts over several years (No Power; No power, again; Still No Power; 'More power!' says India. 'No power,' says NZ; Power outrage ) and remind you of several famous power outages (such as Auckland 1998, 2006, 2009 … ) this news and that conclusion above simply confirms what should have been obvious years ago: in this country the lifeblood of production, energy, is running out.

Not because New Zealand is short of resources with which to produce energy. But because politicians and earth-first worshippers have declared we are not allowed to use them.

We are essentially enfeebling ourselves.

Hydro is now over in this country. The Resource Management Act and the Conservation Act between them make the building of new hydro dams impossible.

And coal is never going to power another new power station. Nick Smith’s RMA and Emissions Trading Scam have between them put paid to that.

So with coal and hydro out, we’re left with windmills—which need hundreds of thousands of acres of space, a population disinterested in the landscape, and coal and hydro stations as backup when the wind doesn’t blow.

Sound realistic?

In other words, in the same position as Germany after putting its eggs in the oxymoronic basket of “renewable energy”—by definition politicised energy, with the emphasis on the “politics” rather than the energy—and Japan are after shutting down their nuclear power stations—but without any of the good reasons Japan had for cutting their generating capacity.

You can’t say I never warned you.

The Green Dream Team of Kyoto and RMA is winning.