Simon Cole

Renewable energy sources have been getting a bad wrap over the past decade, with the spectacular South Australian state-wide blackout in 2016 highlighting energy security and being unfairly used to scapegoat renewables. There is political division over where our energy should come from and whether the cost of reducing emissions is an unreasonable burden to householders.

As our planet tilts its northern side toward the sun, some folk there, bathed in its warm, calming rays, seem unmollified. But hunkering down in an Australian Winter is fun — especially in subtropical Brisbane. Unfortunately, there’s a tendency to do the same thing with views on climate science these days — to name just one policy area. The war in the Middle East has a lot of people worried. Friends from Europe to the Galapagos tell me the world is falling apart.

The countries that are in domestic social strife these days like South Africa (a failed state), Britain (a failing state), France and Sweden have all fallen for the folly of multiculturalism. Some countries have come back from the brink. Denmark and (slowly) Sweden, have proven that folly can be fixed. In the United States, deportations are putting an end to the global trend of ‘asking what the world can do for me, not what I can do for my country’ (paraphrased quote from JFK’s inaugural speech).