By Tom Livanos

To Chartres,

By way of introduction, my name is Tom Livanos. I live in eastern Australia. May I ask you what your name is?

Your first question about potential damage from the three hydroelectric power plants is a valid one. You are correct: the article does not explain any of the details of its operations. The last line of the article however reads as follows: "From the tour we give, our guests understand how well things can operate when you have the enthusiasm and conviction of the people". I make two points. The first is that, from what is written about the achievements of the people of Wildpoldsried, this concluding statement does not seem to be an exaggeration. If I, for one, were to entrust anyone with considering the ecological impacts of a hydroelectric power station, I would entrust the people of this village. The second point is: have you perhaps considered what the implications would have been had you been vocal in Wildpoldsried in 1997? Or, when astonishingly high amounts of labour and money were expended in the 1800s to build coal fired power stations? My second point to this paragraph is, as a question, have you thought about where we would be today had your attitude taken hold at either time?

The other point you make is on base-load power. My response to you here is along similar lines but I will say it in another way. Is it your expectation that generating base-load electricity from solar and wind power go from zero to complete before anything is allowed to be done? I invite you to read the comment I made at 10:19pm on 20 September 2011. The *potential* of solar power to meet the entire world's present day energy needs is there. Not only is it there, it is there by a factor in the thousands. Is it your expectation that the world turns to solar and wind power within what a week? a month? a year of your comment? That all the people, all the businesses, all the governments, all the organisations all across the world convert to solar in that time period?

Well, the last thing I have to write to you is: if that is your expectation, you may want to think about the fact that it takes hundreds of millions of years for fossil fuels to form within the Earth's crust. You may then want to go to a primary school arithmetic class and ask them if we can continue going on our present path. We burn fossil fuels each year, each month, each week. Not only that, we burn more in each time period (e.g. month say) than we did in any equivalent time period (e.g. month) previous. What about the damage caused there in these burning processes?

My thankyou to you for reading and, perhaps, for considering. That is all up to you.

Thankyou and regards,

Tom Livanos.

PS. If you are Charles Butterfield (similar username - albeit slightly - to your own), I have not received any reference citing the important piece of information (your words) which you wrote about in your comment of 5:01pm 14 September 2011.