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)

Julian's recent articles

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.

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.

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, unfounded beliefs. Not unexpectedly, the state failed and darkness settled over the land.

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.

JULIAN CRIBB. The Rise of Woman. Greta Thunberg.

Shes 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

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 trend towards global consciousness of the peril in which we stand and action to mitigate it.

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.

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?

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.

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.

JULIAN CRIBB: When optimism spells disaster...

One of the most dangerous threats to the human future in this, the Age of Perils, is ... optimism.

JULIAN CRIBB. Green China.

Capitalising on failures of US leadership, China is emerging as a potential great green power of the 21st century.

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 Americas 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.

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, Stalins hand-picked boss of Soviet agricultural science. It was the worlds first big case of politics distorting the objectivity of science, for its own ends.

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