Anyone who thinks Australia will achieve a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 the way we’re going, should take a cold shower just to get used to it. We’re not all on the same page here.

While Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong have been in Bali making a long-overdue commitment to emissions targets for Australia, in NSW, Morris Iemma and Michael Costa have been preparing to flog off our highly-polluting power stations to the highest bidder.

While we um and ar about what reduction in carbon emissions is achievable, the building industry carries on knocking up office blocks and McMansions that don’t have functioning windows and are uninhabitable without air-conditioning.

A look at the forecast figures for electricity consumption shows that it is the summer time rise in demand for cooling that is driving the call for more power stations.

In this paper last week, Steve Whan applauded the plan to privatise our electricity supply. He quoted Morris Iemma’s press release of December 10 and I recommend that everyone who cares about our energy future should read it. (Look on the website of the Department of Premier and Cabinet.)

To call the Premier’s energy statement a farrago of weasel words would be putting it way too kindly and a slight on ferrets everywhere.

The biggest con of all is the assertion that, “it simply does not make sense for NSW taxpayers to pay up to $15 billion for electricity investment when the private sector can do it at no cost to the taxpayer”.

What? Doesn’t the private sector expect to ever see its money back plus profit? Of course it does and if it’s not from us taxpayers, who will be paying it, Martians?

Basically, the NSW Government is ignoring climate change entirely and pushing for more coal-fired power stations. It is pinning its hopes on a magic device, yet to be invented, that will bolt on to the side of a power station chimney, catch all that nasty CO2 and pipe it off to who-knows-where and squirt it down a rabbit hole.

The challenge climate change poses for government should not be shirked by passing it off to private enterprise. If the government makes a motsa by selling off its dirty electricity generation, how will it then be able to enforce strict pollution controls?

Are we to believe Morris Iemma when he promises to regulate the price of electricity until 2013 when the prospective new owners of the supply don’t know what carbon trading or tax regulations will cost them?

Something’s not fair dinkum here. The society of the future, if all goes well, will not rely on massive dinosaur-like, overseas-owned, fossil fuel steam engines to make lots of electricity in a few mega-plants.

We can have clean, renewable, decentralised energy generation and it will create jobs and revitalise rural economies. Focussing on energy conservation and sustainable development is the best way to bring more power to the people.