And stay up there!

Activists spend night perched up power station chimney

Four Greenpeace activists have spent a cold night sitting on top of a smoke stack at the Swanbank Power Station west of Brisbane.

The activists - protesting against coal-fired electricity - have been on the smoke stack for more than 24 hours after breaking into the power station early yesterday morning.

I think they should stay up there! Word is they were originally threatening not to come down until the Swanbank Power Station was shut down. Well, I'd like to send a message to the protesters right here and now (I'm sure they'll get the message - after all, they had time to put up blog posts and have a few mobile phone interviews with radio presenters). Protesters, the energy future of Australia is much too serious to stop now; you should stay up that power stack until the entire nation - no, the entire world - goes solar! Stay up there forever if need be!

It wouldn't be too difficult to find other reasons for them to stay up there. Why, we need to send out a strong message to the Labor Party that this is not a time to be flirting with nuclear energy, and what better way of sending out that message than for you to stay up that smoke stack? And what about the issue of mulesing? True, it's got nothing to do with Australia's energy future, but it's important, dammit - important enough to keep you guys up the smoke stack, that is!

I think we should send out a strong and appropriate message here and now to these protesters, who are - at least according to one radio interview - getting paid and recompensed by Greenpeace for their 'principled' actions: protesters, stay up that big old smoke stack and show the world how much you care... and we'll show you how much we care, too!