oobzn
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 Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2008 6:59 am Post subject: The Enormous Price Of Canberra>s Green Faith |
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Green policies means brown lawns and red ink.
October 19, 2008
Canberrans suffer the price of their green delusions - and greener
government. Take the price of the Labor Government>s policy to build no
new dams, and drain the one it has for "environmental flows":
One Canberra economist, Terry Dwyer, a visiting fellow at the Australian
National University, ... calculates the total cost of water restrictions
thus: 16,000 trees have been lost due to lack of water. The replacement
cost of a mature tree is estimated as $8000 to $16,000, so the cost of
dead trees alone could be $300 million to $400 million.
Forced labour needs to be valued. Householders spending an average of
three hours extra a week holding hoses or lugging buckets through 16
weeks of water restrictions equates to about $120 million. Add an
average of $2000 to restore lawns and gardens for each household (it
cost me a lot more), and that implies a cost over 110,000 households of
$220 million.
Further, at the present $4.29 a kilolitre for urban water, the 166
gigalitres let down the river since 2000 for environmental flows during
the drought would be valued at more than $700 million. Of course, if the
water had not been let out, water restrictions might have been avoided.
"So it therefore seems a conservative estimate that costs in excess of
$1700million have been inflicted by water restrictions and water being
let out of the dams," Dwyer says.
"This cost ignores health costs, cracking buildings and trimming damaged
and dangerous trees. This all translates to something like a cost of
around $15,500 per Canberra household, perhaps surpassing the cost per
US household imposed by George Bush>s bank bailout."
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_price_of_canberras_green_faith/
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Warmest Regards
Bonzo
"Global warming is the attack on capitalism that socialism couldn>t
bring." Jack Welch, Former General Electric CEO |
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