We have another sad reality check for all the ideologues that dream of a day when our world is run by fresh air and daisies, and the ugly fossil fuels are banned from existence.

Genesis energy, the power company, owned in part by the government and by the state are importing coal.

And why would they be doing this? Several reasons, lake levels are down, we have a disruption to the gas supply, the South Island's demand is up and Tiwai has ramped up their fourth production line. 

Of course, this government hates fossil fuels, and is banning future licences to explore for oil. It's prevented the West Coast from opening a coal mine that would have provided not just coal, but the jobs that go with it.

And all of his is based around the deluded belief that right here right now, we don't need to rely on fossil fuels. Except, of course, we do. 

Malcolm Turnbull lost his job over this stuff. He was so obsessed with the Paris climate change deal that he went down the same sort of track we are.

Then the price of power kept rising. South Australia, who could not run with the ideology fast enough, kept running out of power and having blackouts.

All the while the miners dug up coal sent it to India and China, who happily burnt it.

And here, the land not short of a coal mine or two, not short of the ability to extract the odd barrel of oil, is faced with having to import the stuff to keep the lights on. 

And in that is your classic real world scenario, up against the hopelessly naive wonderings of the loonies, who don’t understand basic supply and demand. 

We don't all bike to work, we don’t all take buses, we don’t all compost, we don’t all recycle our cardboard. One day, maybe one day, hydrogen, water or solar will power our country, our economy, and our planet.

But right now it doesn’t, and not even close.

And power companies who largely rely on rain, and rain in the right place, are vulnerable not just to the vagaries of nature, but the vagaries of demand. 

The least we could be doing, if we need coal, is use ours. The least we could be doing is being honest enough to accept that all your Paris climate hot air, doesn’t keep the heaters on.

And if it doesn’t rain, we do need to use other means to drive energy.

And one of those means is coal. 

And the fact we need to bring it in, is because we've bought more into the hype of things like Paris.

As opposed to the cold simple truth that the PC spin, has next to no real world credibility.