Nuclear power generated electricity in Australia? Surely we Aussies would know better – after all, we’ve opposed it pretty strongly for decades now. We know it’s a horribly expensive technology and we’re well aware of nuclear disasters such as Chernobyl. Heck, we’ve suffered at the hands of the nuclear tests carried out in our own outback in the 50’s that poisoned the land for decades.

But something’s changed. The government’s spin machine has people changing their minds about nuclear energy, and unfortunately, the government has been successful in doing so using the threat of global warming.

A poll recently published in The Australian newspaper stated that 45% of people surveyed favour of the development of a local nuclear power industry. That a huge jump of 10% over just 4 months ago.

Is this Australians showing our true colours? We tsk, tsk about global warming and say how terrible it is and that we must do something and this is one of the solutions? What this says to me is that we wish to go on consuming power at the levels we currently are. We want a green planet, but the hungry appliances we use are far more important to us. And that’s terrible.

Practically every Australian household has the ability to generate their own power through solar and wind. By turning our roofs into solar panels and with some sensible reduction in the way we use energy, many of us could actually be feeding excess electricity into the grid.

There’s also the wind and solar farms springing up and improved associated technologies are being unveiled practically every day. Why not take nuclear power off the table altogether and focus more on these options?

I firmly believe that one of the reasons for our Prime Minister’s fixation on nuclear power is that government doesn’t like the “unwashed masses” becoming too independent; which can be partially achieved by generating our own power. If you control the water, the electricity and other essential services, you control the people. In one of our states, up until very recently, it was even illegal to have your own rainwater tank!

By the way, the same polls showed that even though 45% state that they are in favor of the development of nuclear power, 66% are against having a nuclear power station in their local area.

Wake up Australia! Nuclear energy is not the answer – there are greener ways and one of the first things we can all do right now is to reduce our personal consumption and put pressure on our politicians to be spending the bucks on non-nuclear options; because they do exist.