We all now know that burning fossil fuels and releasing vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere is causing climate change. There are still a few sceptics amongst us who think it’s all just a dust storm in a teacup but they are fewer every day.

How our major energy utilities approach the subject is therefore of considerable importance. After we received our Country Energy bill last week, accompanied by a glossy newsletter, I feel a few observations need to be made. Basically, it’s not telling us the things we need to know.

Page one starts with an image of a bloke looking resolutely into the distance under a wildly optimistic subheading, “Drought Buster Pack – exciting special offer” and it’s all downhill from there. Page three tells us about all the good stuff Country Energy does in the community and that’s good, there’s no problem there. Even the bloke who looks like he’s push starting the space shuttle looks earnest. But what of the future, the big picture?

It was page five, “Freedom to Fly” with the image that reminded me of the cute hippy chick from ‘Sea Change’, that really got me going. Internet speeds “up to 142 times faster” had such a precise feel to it, I got quite excited. I remembered that in Queenbeyan, Country Energy have been evaluating a system of fast internet using the power lines to carry the data. At last, something for us mob in ‘Sol’s Shadow’, the 5% of the country no-one cares about.

Alas but no. It’s just for the folks who already have good phone connections, nothing to do with power lines at all; just another ‘service provider’ going for the easy money.

Let’s skip the St Johns first aid kit on page six, the need for ID checks and the recipe for rocky road, all interesting if not electrifying, and get to page ten.

The “Drought Buster Pack, only $54.95 – save 15%”. You too can have a cistern thingy, a collapsible bucket, a kitchen tap device and a plastic “cute little duck” shower timer that “kids love”. Country Energy seems to be suggesting that if we diligently use all these gimmicks, water and electricity will be saved, the drought will break, the landscape will be rehydrated and we will all be saved.

Twelve pages of simple glossy spin. What about the benefits to the environment and your power bill of replacing your electric water heater with solar or gas? How about telling us how we can take advantage of the Government’s offer of a solar panel subsidy? What’s a smart meter? Can we feed power back into the grid for credits? What are our options?

I’d like to know how much of Country Energy’s electricity is generated from renewable energy and what plans it has for increasing this amount in the future. We’ve got to get serious about energy consumption. There’s no time to waste with glossy full-colour, feel-good bumflets. Give us hard facts in black and white on recycled waste paper – but tell us what we need to know.

The pressing challenge is to burn less coal tomorrow than we burnt today. Our governments and energy utilities need to acknowledge this and treat us as intelligent equal partners in the quest for local solutions to what is a global problem.

If they don’t, our future will not be at all glossy.