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Canberra Today 25°/28° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Why more people turned out for turbines

TWO rallies held yesterday in Canberra to express opposite views on wind farms demonstrated the lopsided nature of the debate over the pros and cons of wind energy.

An image circulated on social media by renewable energy supporters this week.
An image circulated on social media by renewable energy supporters this week.
As a group of anti-wind power campaigners gathered outside Parliament House to demonstrate against the ever-growing numbers of wind turbines being built, a much larger group gathered in Garema Place to express their support for renewable energy.

Opposition to wind turbines and the government subsidies that help them compete with cheaper forms of power has grown along with the technology itself, especially among members of rural and outer suburban communities where they are most commonly built.

There is also a belief, based on anecdotal reports, that wind turbines cause mysterious health problems to people who live nearby, although scientific studies overseas have found no evidence to support this.

At the same time there has not been much scientific evidence collected at all on the possibility, according to ANU researcher Dr Liz Hanna, who is the convenor of the national Climate Change Adaptation Research Network for Human Health, and a member of the National Health and Medical Research Council’s Wind Farms and Human Health Reference Group, which is due to update its findings on wind turbines and human health later this year.

As well as concerns about human health and the use of taxpayers money, Dr Hanna says much of the opposition to wind turbines is based on simple “annoyance” at the sight and sound of the machines, and is stoked by the lack of evidence about their possible health effects.

At the same time, she says there is “very well documented evidence of the risks to human health and the environment associated with the fossil fuel industry”.

“If you put [wind power] up on a set of scales with the health problems from the fossil fuel industry … It’s a matter of the intensity of the health problems, the populations that are involved in exposure and the big one – the impact on the climate through global warming, on future food supplies and water,” Dr Hanna says.

“I think it’s the balance of risk that’s actually driving most people who support renewables.

“We need energy of some sort and we’re talking about energy that is streets ahead in terms of harm to human health and the environment, versus a type that is really bad in terms of its negative impact.”

Dr Hanna says the international agreement to keep global warming under a rise of two degrees celsius is an arbitrary number and that many scientists believed even one degree was “too high”.

“Global warming is already causing havoc and it’s only just begun, but I shudder to think what it’s going to be like in the future,” she adds.

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