Britain passes one week without coal power for first time since 1882

> These Southeastern coastal forests in the US are home to bears, endangered red wolves, salamanders and a number of bird species as well as many endemic plants. According to a 2015 report by the National Resources Defense Council, the potential pellet sourcing area for existing and proposed pellet mills includes “critical habitat for 25 species that are federally listed as endangered or imperilled”. The area has been classified as a biodiversity hotspot, meaning that it contains an unusually high level of biodiversity (2000 endemic species in all) and that it is threatened. The threats here come from forest degradation and fragmentation, caused by urbanisation and ‘forest industries’ such as biomass.

[0]: https://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2018/pellets-introduction/

Without protection everything's a useful asset to someone.

It’s a natural process, but still dirty and wasteful.

To some extent it's also about jobs. Where I grew up, in the Hunter Valley, coal mining is a major employer. The export boom in commodities fueled the economy and lifestyle of tens of thousands. Shut down that industry a lot of people are going to hurt financially. Politicians just won't do it.

It's a case of short term electoral thinking at the expense of the environmental future.

A poorly maintained grid and a storm bringing down some infrastructure, and then the government steadfastly refusing to bring a power station online in peak demand were the causes of the power outages; renewables had nothing to do with it.

Renewables haven’t actually been the cause of any of our recent blackouts. Even back in the big storm a few years ago when they were blamed by conservative politicians and journalists, the actual reports came back showing it was more to do with the wind downing critical transmission lines, one of the interconnectors being out of service, grid management issues, etc. - that a bunch of wind turbines tripped due to safety settings was basically meaningless given all the actual problems.

More recently, coal and gas plant failures have been much more of a problem, like in the recent Victoria when over a GW of fossil fuel generation was out of service. It would been a lot worse without solar and hydro, as well as unexpectedly good wind conditions that took up a lot of the shortfall.