Power policy running on wind and sun

"We seem to be running out of energy options?" I asked them rhetorically. Invariably I would be met with that patronising smile they reserve for the lesser of the species who fail to see the error of their ways.

"Minister!" they replied in their most condescending manner, "there is wind and solar". I resisted the temptation to point out to them that they appeared to have journeyed to Canberra without the benefit of either.

Eventually I ceased to be environment minister but my successors were subjected to the same arguments with increasing passion as global warming and climate change became the environmental issue.

In recent years wind power enthusiasts became excited as more and more wind farm projects came on stream. Their excitement abated when they saw one, or until birds and bats started bumping into them.

When the Coalition's Environment Minister Senator Ian Campbell announced that he was giving the thumbs down to a $220 million wind farm project in Gippsland because one rare orange-bellied parrot might be killed each year, the burgeoning anti-wind farm movement was ecstatic.

Cynics suggested his decision had more to do with a promise made to the electorate of McMillan in the 2004 federal election that wind farms would not be tolerated. "Windies", on the other hand, were quick to point out that cars killed hundreds of thousands of birds annually and no one was suggesting we cease using cars.

To his credit, Campbell has been consistent. He has asked Regional Services Minister Warren Truss to stop funding a wind farm in Denmark, Western Australia, which just happens to be in the electorate of Wilson Tuckey. We have all learned it is unwise to cross Tuckey.

Allow me at this point to declare an interest. In the middle of all this brouhaha I had not long taken up residence in Bungendore, near Canberra, when I received a notice from the NSW Department of Planning that a 63-turbine wind farm was proposed a few kilometres north of our idyllic rural abode.

Before you could say nimby, No Wind Farms signs started appearing throughout the village of Bungendore. Now there's a surprise. What to do?

There are not a lot of options. I could support the wind farm and take the alternative route to Sydney, thus avoiding seeing it. Alternately, I could propose a nuclear reactor or pray that solar, which provides less than one per cent of the world's energy needs, becomes economically viable. As a last resort I could sell the car, stop flying, freeze in winter and fry in summer. On balance, I think I'll go with the wind farm.