IT WAS May 2004 and John Howard was looking for an exit clause. A Federal Government scheme to kickstart Australia's renewable energy industry had proved successful beyond anybody's expectations. Wind, the cheapest and most viable source of renewable energy, was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the mandatory renewable energy target.

Giant wind turbines were sprouting all over the country, turbine blade and engine manufacturers were setting up shop, and cash was pouring in from foreign and domestic investors. It seemed Australia was finally tackling its greenhouse gas emissions by getting some clean electricity.

But not everyone was happy with the mandatory target. Leaked minutes from a meeting in the chilly confines of Canberra's political corridors show the Prime Minister had called on some of Australia's biggest contributors to global warming - including the coal and uranium miners Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton - to help the Government devise a way to pull the rug from under the wind industry, but still be seen to be tackling climate change.

Two years on, it has become clear just how deadly that meeting was for wind power. The Government's refusal to extend the mandatory target has left hundreds of renewable energy projects unable to secure contracts. One developer last week cancelled two wind farm proposals worth $550 million, while the future of another $250 million project is in doubt.

The Australian Wind Energy Association says as much as $12 billion worth of proposed wind farms is at risk. On top of that, the Government has tried to kill wind farm projects in Victoria and Western Australia and has called on state governments to sign a development code that would give local councils the power to veto wind projects because of community opposition - something that does not apply to new coalmining ventures.

Part of the pro- and contra-nuke debate is muddied by a  dirty, knockdown fight by the Old Technology (coal and nuclear) interest groups to suppress, downplay, or muddle news of success in cleaner energy technologies, and to prevent such technologies from getting anything like the subsidies that the extractive industries have enjoyed for over 200 years.  One doesn't have to believe in "secret carburetors that run on water" to understand that an established, very large, very politically connected power bloc will fight like hell to prevent any competitors from appearing on the scene.

Rio Tinto, now that's a name to conjure with...

As with many of these dirty little kicking matches, some of the "grassroots groups" may be astroturf and others may be -- unwittingly -- acting as proxies for the power players (much as the US and USSR manipulated and lesser regimes to fight their proxy "bush wars" during the Cold War).

[...]At a time of near unanimous scientific agreement that large greenhouse gas cuts must be made soon to avoid dangerous changes in world weather patterns, how is it that wind has become a dirty word?

Environment groups say it is all tied up with Federal Government reluctance to impose any kind of cost on fossil fuel industries and its desire to sell more uranium to nuclear weapons states such as China and India. They say it is no coincidence that wind - which could in time be a strong, clean competitor to fossil fuels - is being demonised while nuclear power is being promoted as a solution to global warming.[...]

Those who oppose the project are happy with Campbell's intervention. Among them is the discredited British environmentalist David Bellamy. In late 2004, at the height of the campaign against the Bald Hills project, Bellamy visited the area to support the anti-wind cause. "It's the last place on earth you'd contemplate building them," he said during a visit to the South Gippsland town of Foster, paid for and organised by Channel Nine's 60 Minutes. "Think of the damage they are doing, and for no return at all," he said.

Not long before his visit to Australia, Bellamy said man-made global warming was a myth and wind power was not a renewable source of energy.

It is misleading claims such as these and connections with anti-wind campaigners overseas that have raised suspicions about Australia's anti-wind activists. The Australia Institute's Clive Hamilton believes the sprouting of local opposition groups is not entirely spontaneous. "I believe there is a network of anti-wind activists associated with climate change sceptics who are fuelling the fires of local opposition," he says.

Research by the Herald shows that a loose association of anti-wind farm groups that goes by the names of Landscape Guardians or Coastal Guardians relies heavily for its information and campaign tactics on overseas groups that have been linked to the nuclear power industry.