The Queensland government recently placed a ban on pumping and dumping carbon dioxide into the rocks of the Great Artesian Basin.

This was an event rarely seen -- politicians stumbling onto a sensible energy policy. Burying CO2 would achieve nothing useful -- just more futile green waste.

But their ban on Carbon Capture and Underground Storage (CCUS) should be extended to all areas of Queensland, not just this one basin.

Even the blinkered Greens and the TikTok generation should recognize that today’s low levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are too close to the red line of death, where all plant life will die (followed by animal life).

Far too much of Earth’s limited carbon dioxide has become locked up in massive deposits of coal, limestone, magnesite, and chalk, and plants are starving. Greenhouse operators have to pump CO2 into their nurseries to help their plants, and cultivated crops and trees do better where they can breathe heavier-than-air CO2 emitted by nearby power stations burning coal or gas. (Trees near the coal-burning Tarong Power station in Queensland were measured to be growing 20% faster than trees 20 km away from the power station.)

While the human use of coal, oil, gas, and limestone has restored some CO2 to the atmosphere it is not enough to allow plants to thrive. Only green fools would add to our problem by burying the gas of life.

Announcing their enlightened ban on CCUS in the GAB, the Queensland Premier said “the unique environmental, agricultural, economic and cultural significance of the Great Artesian Basin is worth protecting."

But surely the flora and fauna of the Great Dividing Range is also worth protecting from the bulldozers clearing roads and sites for wind-power stations and preparing for the water-wasting hydrogen industry speculators. Who is protecting our farms, grasslands, and woodlands from those promoting suffocating solar blankets? And who is going to save the whales, fishermen, and seabirds from dangerous and noisy offshore wind machines?

Will the green destroyers keep pushing until every ridgeline has its regiment of whirling swords and every grassy flat is smothered under plastic panels? Decaying remnants of these green religious monuments will remain like the cold silent Easter Island statues, reminding future generations of the stupidity of this generation of Australians.

Have a look at the disastrous impact of Green energy projects on the natural environment in Queensland.

If a private landowner did this on his own land he would be punished severely. But for the disciples of the Green Energy Religion it seems that anything is okay.

So-called “Greens” are driving all this damage and cost to produce electricity that is intermittent and unreliable. And the worst is yet to come.

At the same time as they force-feed this chaotic rush into intermittent energy, our politicians are also rushing to electrify everything -- cars, trucks, trains, and home heating/cooking. When coal, diesel, and gas power are banned, and we are still arguing about nuclear power, all these electric cars, trucks, and trains will stop at sundown with flat batteries. How do we recharge all those batteries while we cook dinner and watch TV on a windless night?

They have another destructive green answer to energy storage: “Install pumped hydro plants on every coastal river.”

These pumped-hydro dreams require electricity to pump water to the upper reservoir when green energy is available during sunny/windy days and then use that stored energy to recharge all those batteries by releasing stored water at night.

But not all the energy can be recovered -- some is always lost. And what if we have three or more cloudy windless days? That’s when the sensible oldies crank up the diesel generator in the shed, get into the old Holden to go shopping (with cash in hand), and drag out the gas-fired barby.

Image: Library of Congress