Writer
Julian Cribb
Julian Cribb AM is an Australian science writer and author of six books on the human existential emergency. His latest book is “How to Fix a Broken Planet” (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
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8 billionth human: Has the population bomb exploded?
Sometime in the next few weeks, human being number 8,000,000,000 will enter the world. But what sort of a world will they inherit? Continue reading »
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Here comes the catastrophocene…
The good news is that the Anthropocene is almost over. It will have been the shortest geological epoch in all of Earth history. Continue reading »
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The Age of Women
Leadership by wise women is indispensable if we are to escape the catastrophe that male leadership is presently building for humanity. Continue reading »
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Humanity: sinking into a stagnant ocean
“We were the first that ever burst into that silent sea.” – STColeridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner Continue reading »
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The media’s role in the age of deceit
The complicity of the media in disseminating false information is a central part of the modern phenomenon. The lie factories cannot flourish without obedient messengers to carry their deceptions. Continue reading »
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Our two-party system is corrupt — vote for decency instead
Next year, voters will be able to toss out party politicians and embrace candidates with a record of integrity and commitment to the future. Continue reading »
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The earth is now warming itself — it may be too late for humanity
Only the complete cessation of all human carbon emissions within this decade and removing carbon from the atmosphere will save us from immolation. Continue reading »
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Idiocracy: how the decline in human intelligence is undermining democracy
Science increasingly suspects the proliferation of harmful nerve toxins in recent decades is to blame for a downturn in our IQ levels — and this is threatening not just our health but our very system of governance. Continue reading »
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Time to end the mass killing
Many times larger than climate change and more deadly than Covid or war, humanity’s chemical emissions are the crisis nobody wants to acknowledge. Continue reading »
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A choice between national happiness – and national misery
Australia treats its environment with indifference. Yet the evidence is mounting that the environment is at the heart of national wellbeing. One country is showing the way. Continue reading »
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Solving the mega-risks
The world is awash with literature describing the deepening self-inflicted crisis into which humanity is pitching. I am frequently asked how we can solve it, presuming we wish to do so. Here, briefly, are the ten most urgent solutions. Continue reading »
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Our national anthem is a joke. Tinkering won’t fix it.
“For those who’ve come across the seas, We’ve boundless plains to share.” The blackest satire in the entire rigmarole. Endorsed by both sides of politics, the plains of Manus Island, Christmas Island and Nauru are scarcely boundless. As for sharing, forget it mate. If you’re a new chum, especially an African or a woman in Continue reading »
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Why 2050 is too darned late…
One and a half million people are already dead, mostly because their governments did not act on sound medical advice about Covid in a sufficient amount of time. Continue reading »
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JULIAN CRIBB. Diagnosing the American Disease
Coronavirus has become the American disease as it exploits a particular flaw in the American character and self-image. The question is, can America heal itself? Continue reading »
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JULIAN CRIBB. Is a Food Supply Crisis the next big hit?
As the world reels under coronavirus and the resulting economic meltdown, another crisis – far more serious – appears to be building: the potential collapse of global food supply chains. Continue reading »
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JULIAN CRIBB.The War on Global Carbon
Citizens of the USA, Australia, Brazil, Canada and elsewhere are slowly waking to the sickening awareness that they are no longer up against local political forces – but, rather, a metastasizing international power against which they are largely impotent. Continue reading »
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JULIAN CRIBB. Age of Darkness: the plan to lobotomise Australia
Centuries from now, future historians will be able to assign a date to the start of the Australian Dark Age: it began in July of 2019. That was the date the nation turned its back on the enlightenment of reason, evidence, science and rationality and forged into a befogged future of political fantasies and wild, Continue reading »
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JULIAN CRIBB. On the Need for an Earth Standard Currency.
In an age of existential emergency, when the future of human civilization depends on how successfully we manage to solve the ten global threats which are of our own making and which now confront us all, it is important for humanity to share a common currency for dealing with them, says Julian Cribb. Continue reading »
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JULIAN CRIBB. The Rise of Woman. Greta Thunberg.
She’s just turned 16 and is already a world leader with more statespersonlike qualities, clear-eyed goals, plain speaking and sheer guts than almost any national head of today or recent history. Julian Cribb looks at the rise of Greta Thunberg Continue reading »
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JULIAN CRIBB. When ‘oil’ spells murder.
A worldwide spate of legal actions against governments and fossil fuel companies is changing the political context of the climate debate more profoundly than anything yet. Yet it may still not be enough to rescue humanity from the other nine existential threats that confront us. Five new groups dedicated to human survival illustrate a new Continue reading »
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JULIAN CRIBB. Highway to an endless energy future.
Australia is spoiled for choice among the array of energies we have to power our future, for centuries to come. Concentrated sunlight, huge reserves of coal, gas, hot rocks, wind, wave and tidal energy, not to mention uranium, thorium, biomass, hydro and other possibilities – thousands of years’ worth of energy in sundry forms. Continue reading »
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JULIAN CRIBB. Can we avert ecocide?
As humans progressively kill off the living creatures which inhabit the planet, do we risk at the same time killing off ourselves? Continue reading »
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JULIAN CRIBB. The ‘Coal Toll’ and the moral vacuum.
While the focus of public debate about energy has been on monetary costs, it has almost entirely ignored the larger issue of human life, health and wellbeing. Julian Cribb sets the record straight. Continue reading »
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JULIAN CRIBB. Our Parliament: an unqualified failure for the future
Australian politicians have next to no qualifications or skills when it comes to deciding the focal issues of our time. No wonder the decision making of recent years has been so poor. Julian Cribb argues that a continued political bias against science, technology and education risks placing Australia among the also-rans of the 21st Century. Continue reading »
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JULIAN CRIBB: When optimism spells disaster…
One of the most dangerous threats to the human future in this, the Age of Perils, is … optimism. Continue reading »
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JULIAN CRIBB. Green China.
Capitalising on failures of US leadership, China is emerging as a potential ‘great green power’ of the 21st century. Continue reading »
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JULIAN CRIBB. The war drums are beating…
Australia risks being drawn into new US wars in Asia. Having been continually at war since 2001 at America’s behest, it is time the Australian people had their say about whether we should continue to engage in belligerent actions in Asia, which are also costing us our freedoms. Continue reading »
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JULIAN CRIBB. When political fantasy trumps scientific fact
During the 1930s, around ten million Russians and Ukrainians starved to death in a horrific event known as Holodomor. Historians have attributed this disaster in part to the quack theories of Trofim Lysenko, Stalin’s hand-picked boss of Soviet agricultural science. It was the world’s first big case of politics distorting the objectivity of science, for Continue reading »
