I combed through the Sentinel-Times coverage of the coming ‘powerline threat’ in its 18th February edition to find anything more threatening than aesthetic distaste for necessary infrastructure to deliver offshore wind power where it is needed ‘to keep the lights on’.

All I could find was an underlying attempt to mobilise NIMBY fears in support of a larger anti-renewables/pro nuke agenda being run by Australia’s immensely powerful fossil fuel lobbies, their Federal Coalition friends and of course, and not least, a certain news chain.

There is nothing wrong with power lines. They do not despoil ‘the pristine’ environment by ‘industrialising’ it, because ‘industrial’ farming practice took out all the pristine stuff well over a century ago.

They are ubiquitous industrial infrastructure and most people don’t whinge about them because they know that without them, they would not be living in a modern economy.

Almost all of our electrical distribution infrastructure is above ground. Get used to it, and the renewables that are going to feed it.

The South Australian Coalition Government plans to be at 100% net renewables within three years. Not all conservatives are energy obtuse or want to get into the most expensive and slow to deploy technology they can find, as long as it isn’t renewable.

When noisy, smoke-belching steam trains first came on the scene, there were the same sort of alarmist arguments going on, promoted by the canal lobbies and stuffy Tories who liked things just the way they were.

There is sometimes a fine line between news coverage and an ideological beat up, and I think SGST crossed it on this one, because it made no attempt to canvas anyone but an unrepresentative swill of naysayers.

Christopher Nagle, Grantville.