Writer
Geoff Davies
Dr. Geoff Davies is an author, commentator and scientist. He is the author of A New Australia: Discarding Delusions and Organising for the Wellbeing of All (2023, https://betternaturebooks.net/my-books/regenoz/). He blogs at Thrival Economics https://thrivaleconomics.blog/.
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Best of 2024: The cut-through message: wind, solar and pumped hydro are all we need, and cheaper
Wind, solar and pumped hydro energy storage can provide all the electrical energy we need, on demand, cheaply, quickly, with minimal carbon emissions. This is the message that will cut through the energy confusion. The clean energy debate is hampered by widespread lack of awareness of off-river pumped hydro energy storage. It is the third Continue reading »
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Barack Obama wants us to care about the oceans
What are the five most precious things in my life? Continue reading »
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They spit in our faces
The fossil fuel corporations and their enablers treat us with complete contempt. This is not very polite to say, I know, but they spit in our faces and laugh. Continue reading »
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Detaching Australia from the death grip of the United States
Our challenge now is to detach Australia from the death grip of the United States and to pursue an independent future, which we are quite capable of doing. To do so we will need not only to remove the old sycophantic parties but also to root out the US ‘security’ zealots from our own secretive Continue reading »
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To save the planet: Disable this global consumer-corporate machine
The global consumer-capitalist machine is well-programmed to consume the planet in its quest to produce ever-more stuff. Avoiding pollution is incompatible with its present functioning. If we want to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions we need to know how to get inside the machine and turn it off, or transform it. Continue reading »
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Universities: dead, buried and cremated?
Adelaide University’s move to eliminate face-to-face lectures removes another essential component of a proper university. On top of corporatisation and with AI rapidly intruding there will be very little of the essence of a university left. Continue reading »
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Artificial cleverness is polluting the essence of our humanity
Fakes, deep fakes, disinformation, lies and rumours pollute the internet, the legacy media and conversations. Some of these are not new, but their power is growing. Now we have a new contender, so-called artificial intelligence, interfering in our human experience. Continue reading »
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How Ronald Reagan started the ruination of the USA
The continuing descent of the United States into polarisation and violence is widely lamented. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 marks the inflection when the descent began in earnest. Continue reading »
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The cut-through message: wind, solar and pumped hydro are all we need, and cheaper
Wind, solar and pumped hydro energy storage can provide all the electrical energy we need, on demand, cheaply, quickly, with minimal carbon emissions. This is the message that will cut through the energy confusion. The clean energy debate is hampered by widespread lack of awareness of off-river pumped hydro energy storage. It is the third Continue reading »
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Death machine: striking at the heart of the planetary problem
What is it going to take, asks climate activist Violet Coco, to stop the death machine, to save humanity and the living world? We first need to find the engine, the beating heart of this global materialist-consumerist-industrial civilisation. Continue reading »
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No Minister, high immigration will cost us $320 billion
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has chastised Opposition Leader Peter Dutton for proposing temporary cuts to permanent immigration numbers, claiming the 25% cut would cost ‘the budget’ tens of billions of dollars. But the far bigger costs of providing durable assets for immigrants are routinely overlooked, or mis-counted as a plus because they add to the GDP. Continue reading »
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Blinded by the light
Richard Flanagan has done us a favour. His recent book, Question 7, takes us back to the creation of atomic bombs, and to their use against people, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those bombs played an indirect but pivotal role in Flanagan’s family. They are directly pivotal in humanity’s story. After many decades of habituation to Continue reading »
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COP out: apocalypse next
Without a large and rapid change in politics, not much in evidence, it now seems unlikely we can avoid climate apocalypse. Continue reading »
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Labor losers
The emptiness of modern Labor is now on full display: maligning refugees, promoting fossil fuels, tinkering around the edge of social crisis, pandering to the wealthy, condoning mass murder, adopting policies of Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison. Continue reading »
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Pumped hydro storage: the neglected, stifled no-brainer
Pumped hydro storage is the ideal complement to wind and solar electricity generation: versatile, modest in scale, cost and build-time, little environmental disruption, mature component technologies, few toxic chemicals, durable. Yet it is consistently overlooked in mainstream discussion in favour of gas-fired power stations, batteries and the nuclear zombie. It is also shackled by out-of-date Continue reading »
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This Labor Government is utterly inadequate
While the Labor government ties itself in knots trying to appease Dutton and the Murdoch media, and dancing in the small space they tolerate, how many important issues go unaddressed? Continue reading »
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Freedom of the press barons?
The ‘disinformation’ (read: lies and bullshit) being propagated about the indigenous Voice to Parliament by the Murdoch media, among others, harms our society. It promotes division, celebrates and cultivates ignorance and bigotry, oppresses a minority and diminishes us all. Why do we tolerate such behaviour? Continue reading »
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Have the old parties fatally betrayed their origins?
It seems Liberal voters are figuring out that their party has been hijacked. Labor voters are slower off the mark, but Labor also bears little resemblance to its past. Political terminology lags even more, which obscures radical shifts in our political mainstream. Continue reading »
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An economy that shrinks quantity and grows quality
Recent debate on this site about economic growth and environmental protection highlights the very narrow and limiting framing of mainstream economics, and points to the far more positive prospect that is available to us if we can broaden our vision. Continue reading »
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It is critical that the housing bubble is safely deflated
Stratospheric housing prices are perhaps the most critical domestic issue in Australia. Not only are a collapse of the housing bubble and a recession now threatening, but homelessness and rent stress, unaddressed and exploited, can quickly fester into ugly politics. Continue reading »
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Dark Ostrich: the attack on Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu
Academics generally do not like outsiders trampling through their patch. Angry people are prone to missing irony. Semantics can be tricky when translating between very different cultures. These three factors seem to explain a fair bit of the vehement critique of Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu in the new book Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate, by Peter Continue reading »
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Forget empire and swaggies, we now need an anthem for all of us
Provoked by piss-weak, one-word Scotty and feisty Julian ‘Matilda’ Cribb, I offer my anthem words that come from a rather different place. Continue reading »
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Do the mainstream media have much influence?
The other day Mungo McCallum remarked in passing that ‘the influence of the media on public opinion has always been greatly overrated’. I beg to differ, along with quite a few other commenters on his article. Here is a longer case for profound media influence. Continue reading »
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Neoclassical economics III: a machine to destroy the world
The false nostrums of the pseudo-science of neoclassical economics have been used to create a system that promotes endlessly increasing consumption of resources and endless elaboration of technology. This system already operates far beyond the needs of people. Our survival requires that we rein in the machine and return to proven and durable, social and Continue reading »
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Neoclassical economics II: pseudo-scholarship
Neoclassical economics is without scholarly integrity. It does not belong in universities. It certainly should not be the dominant source of policy advice to governments. Continue reading »
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Neoclassical economics I: farcical global warming analyses
Analyses of the economic effects of global warming by prominent economists are based on patently invalid arguments, profound ignorance of the global response to solar energy and basic misrepresentation of scientific sources. Their conclusion that the effects are minor is egregiously in error and use of their analyses to advise governments has placed the world Continue reading »
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Dear Labor
Has anyone among your parliamentary cohort noticed that neoliberalism is a failure? Has it occurred to anyone that promoting selfishness and making people insecure is a recipe for people to turn on each other and shred the social fabric? Does anyone think it might be time to stop being Liberal-lite? Time to champion the battlers Continue reading »
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GEOFF DAVIES. The betrayal, corruption and capture of the Liberal Party
The Liberal Party has strayed far from the vision propounded by its founder, Sir Robert Menzies, to the point of being captured by special interests. Continue reading »
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GEOFF DAVIES. The Independent path to effective democracy, and survival.
A way to break us out of the ossified and toxic parliamentary culture and the fearful stupor of the electorate. A way to restore fluid and functional governance. Continue reading »
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GEOFF DAVIES. A central dysfunction: house price inflation, stagnant economy
The problem with the housing bubble is not a shortage of housing, the problem is an excess of money. The solution is to restrict the amounts banks can loan. The solution is a credit squeeze. But it would have to be done carefully and the government would have to be willing to spend. Continue reading »
