The South Australia blackout kerfuffle has sent conservatives into a tailspin. Not convinced that it was a case of the state’s infrastructure being thoroughly pounded by a once-in-50-years storm, they’ve seen fit to portray a state that is reasonably progressive on energy – they get about 40% of their power from renewables like wind and solar – as some kind of authoritarian eco-fascist hell.
Even Malcolm Turnbull, who once upon a time was somewhat progressive on the environment, delivered a press conference blaming renewable energy targets for what went down. Also Labor for implementing said targets:
But the cake was taken by this tweet from everyone’s favourite columnist Miranda Devine, which is blew the competition out of the water when it came to making no sense either as a point or satire of a point:
Remind you of anywhere? #Adelaide #SAblackout pic.twitter.com/MhKP3pfvrm
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) September 29, 2016
Remind you of anywhere? This state that just had its power grid knocked out by an enormous storm… doesn’t it remind you just a little bit of North Korea, the notorious hermit kingdom ruled by a madman according to the unhinged Juche ideology? The labour camps, the Cold War paranoia… doesn’t that just remind you a little bit of wind farms?
Or maybe her point was North Korea is also fond of renewable energy? It’s not untrue – apparently solar panel uptake is quite widespread in the North Korean city of Pyongyang. In that sense, I suppose you could say that the Australian city of Adelaide is not dissimilar to the despotic regime of North Korea.
Maybe it’s extremely literal – North Korea often appears quite dark in maps as they shut off power at night to conserve electricity. In that sense, By that standard, Adelaide last night was not unlike North Korea.
Cheers, Miranda. Good tweet.
Source: Twitter.
Photo: Twitter.
