Half a cup of coffee or a safe climate? Saving the renewable energy target

Surveys show that Australians love renewable energy, and wind power quietly kept power bills below what they would have been if we just relied on coal over summer. Still it seems the Abbott Government is hostile to the Renewable Energy Target (RET), a policy responsible for clean inroads into dirty energy use in this country. Linking renewable energy to price hikes, even though it’s not true, has been pretty effective so far and after a review into the RET, may allow them to abolish it or reduce it to the point it’s ineffective.

The RET costs us just $1.40 a week. That’s 17 cups of coffee a year. Scrapping the RET would mean a move back to coal-fired power, no chance of meeting our emissions target, and the loss of employment across the sector. All for less than half a cup of coffee a week. And who wants that?