AUSSIE FARMERS URGED TO GROW ENERGY

A forward-thinking Aussie points out to her rural constituents that their failing farms can become energy empires in the New Energy era.

Farmers urged to become energy generators
November 19, 2007 (AAP via Adelaide Now)

WHO
Sarah Hanson-Young, Senate candidate, Australian Green Party

Australia has lots of sun. It could be a big cash crop. (click to enlarge)

WHAT
Hanson-Young called on Australia’s farmers to revive their failing traditional farms with solar and wind installations and become energy producers.

WHEN
- The Australian election is November 24. The issue of climate change is expected to influence the way many Australians vote.
- Hanson-Young’s Green Party would have Australian utilities obtain 25% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

WHERE
Hanson-Young wants to represent South Australia, a state on the south central coast, in the nation’s Senate.

WHY
Climate change-associated drought has put many small farms, especially in southern Australia, at great risk of sustained viability. Hanson-Young emphasized how little water wind and solar farming would require. She also emphasized that this would turn the farmers from one of the problems of climate change into part of the solution.

Australia has been aggressively growing wind power but Hanson-Young thinks its time to get the grass roots involved. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
Hanson-Young: "We can already see the devastating impacts of climate change on regional Australia as the drought bites and water becomes scarcer…Neither Liberal nor Labor offer anything more than band-aid solutions with drought-relief cheques and hand-outs for leaving the land…Both parties are abandoning farmers and regional communities to a hotter and drier future…The Greens will enable farmers to generate income from their land even in drought and at the same time give us an opportunity to develop a strategic plan for our energy future."