Peter Sainsbury
Peter Sainsbury is a retired public health worker with a long interest in social policy, particularly social justice, and now focusing on climate change and environmental sustainability. He is extremely pessimistic about the world avoiding catastrophic global warming.
Peter's articles (369 total)
Environment: Shoddy impact assessments satisfy fossil fuel companies and governments
Oil and gas risks in the Arafura and Timor Seas are being underplayed, small bushland remnants deserve protection, and solar’s rapid growth still has not displaced fossil fuels.
Environment: Six revolutions and four billion years made today’s biosphere
This week’s environment round-up looks at the metabolic revolutions that remade Earth, China’s simultaneous coal and renewables boom, habitat gardens and Australia’s Cape Grim climate monitoring.
Environment: sustainability is about redefining what makes a good life, not sacrifice
This week’s environment round-up looks at the search for sustainable wellbeing, the vast fungal networks keeping ecosystems alive, and the likelihood of warming exceeding 1.5°C before 2030.
Environment: Governments must use the evidence to encourage low-carbon lifestyles
Encouraging people to adopt low-carbon lifestyles is useful but no silver bullet for climate change. Plus, deep sea mining of thermal vents may look commercially attractive but will lead to the extinction of many unique animals.
Environment: UN says 2050 before greenhouse gas emissions fall
Despite all the talk, emissions will be almost 50 per cent higher in 2050, speeding up global warming and bringing tipping points closer. The US’s coercive neocolonialism trades medicines for minerals. And Australian mammals’ eyes, ears and noses help them enjoy the night.
Environment: El Niño spells trouble for Aussies this spring
A new El Niño will likely bring heatwaves, droughts and health problems to southern Australia. In the UK, it’s already too hot for a warm beer. Wealthy nations are making very slow progress on emissions reductions.
Environment: a smaller global population won’t reduce climate change
Reducing the global population won’t stop global warming and, after temporarily overshooting 1.5oC, the world won’t return to what it was but we can still act to save our flora.
Environment: Cities swelter as global warming speeds up
Global warming is accelerating, extreme heat is already endangering lives in India, and Australia’s Safeguard Mechanism is failing to deliver meaningful emissions cuts from the country’s biggest industrial polluters.
Environment: Atlantic currents are slowing so let’s dam the Bering Strait
When you’ve run out of options to solve the climate problem sensibly, do something ludicrous like damming the Bering Strait. All Norway’s new cars are EVs. Greenhouse gas emissions are up 50 per cent since nations decided to control them.
Environment: Air pollution still kills almost eight million each year
Outdoor and indoor air pollution cause one in eight deaths, mainly in low income countries, climate change is bringing heatwaves and droughts together in hot-dry extremes, and the market has no incentive to save humanity.
Environment: Australia’s expanding urban fringes at high risk of catastrophic bushfires
Urban fire risk, failing carbon markets, rising energy demand and accelerating polar change highlight the growing scale and complexity of environmental pressures.
Environment: Class and race fuel climate collapse in Northern Territory
From devastating floods in the Northern Territory to the global failure to curb fossil fuels and the human cost of shipbreaking, environmental damage is accelerating – and hitting the most vulnerable hardest.
Environment: Nature is in decline – and we are funding the damage
Glaciers are disappearing, biodiversity loss is accelerating, and governments continue to spend far more destroying nature than protecting it.
Environment: Industry’s carbon capture fantasy is climate action’s nightmare
Carbon capture and storage continues to fail for the climate but keeps fossil fuels and profits flowing. Renewables are taking over the US power system despite Trump.
Environment: If people like Grace Tame can’t be ‘difficult’, who can? – speaking up as ecosystems reach breaking point
Human demand is pushing ecosystems beyond safe limits – while weak policy, unrealistic emissions targets and the silencing of dissenting voices make the crisis harder to confront.
Environment: Carbon credit markets benefit the participants but not the climate
Carbon markets still promise big but deliver little, the Global North’s economic development path will not work for the Global South, an uncontrolled sale of rat poison is needlessly killing native wildlife.
Environment: warming oceans, sinking coasts and Covid’s impact on birds
New research shows oceans warming to depths of 2,000 metres, human-driven land subsidence intensifying sea level risks in China, and pandemic lockdowns altering bird evolution in Los Angeles.
Environment: A hotter Middle East, a warming Arctic and heatwaves that won’t retreat
Arab nations face a very hot future, more severe heatwaves will continue for 1,000 years after we reach net zero, and changing land use has contributed to global warming, now global warming is damaging the land.
Environment: State-owned fossil fuel companies dominate CO2 emissions
16 state-owned fossil fuel companies top the CO2 emission charts, nations need to be rich to electrify and need to electrify to get rich, and Norway drives the EV boom.
Environment: The energy transition is underway – nuclear is not part of it
Nuclear is going nowhere, fossils are facing a bleak future and renewables are surging to the future. A Rich Polluter Profit Tax and an Excess Profit Tax would raise over US$1 trillion each year.
Environment: Small-bodied and short-lived, tiny freshwater fish play big roles in ecosystems
A threatened Aussie tiddler flashes a fin for tiny freshwater fish worldwide, toxic PFAS chemicals are all around us and deep inside us and never go away, and illegal gold mining in Congo destroys the environment and communities.
Environment: Agricultural emissions are roasting the planet
Together, 45 global livestock companies produce more greenhouse gases than all but eight countries. Plus, crimes against nature are big business that rely on criminal networks, corrupt officials and eager customers, and global warming marches on.
Environment: It’s official - Australia’s extreme weather events will get more severe
Australia’s first Climate Risk Assessment confirms we’re in for more frequent and more extreme climate hazards. Ten years on from the Paris Agreement, Australia and governments around the world are still kicking the climate action can down the road.
Environment: More good recycling is needed – emphasis on good
Low levels of plastic recycling are bad for human health and the environment. For lead, high levels of dangerous recycling are doing the damage. Northern Australia’s vast, ecologically relatively intact savannas are undervalued.
Degrowing the economy for people and planet
Imperialism, colonialism, racism and ecocide: the four horsemen of capitalism’s apocalypse? Climate change threatens the survival of migratory species, and China continues to dominate the supply of rare earth elements.
Bill Gates knows the climate and poverty facts but misses the politics
Bill Gates downplays climate catastrophe, wolves are blamed – or credited – for ecosystem repair, and China’s energy surge defies Western narratives.
Environment: It’s official – we aren’t winning the climate fight
The latest UN climate summit avoided even naming fossil fuels, while mounting evidence shows climate damage accelerating – from melting glaciers to declining ocean life.
No COP for Australia. No tears from me
Hosting a UN climate summit should be about global cooperation on combating climate change. Australia’s bid for COP31 reveals how far COP has drifted.
Environment: Paris 2015 generated hope, but not enough climate action
Ten years on from the Paris Agreement, staying within the 1.5oC guardrail seems increasingly unlikely, even though there’s plenty of money to do it. Really, it’s legal to chop bits off the Great Barrier Reef and sell them? Microsoft is struggling to meet its promise to become carbon-free.
Environment: The reformed EPBC Act – will the environment or business have priority?
After six years, reforming the EPBC Act may be reaching a conclusion. Twelve environmental defenders, many Indigenous, are murdered every month. Removing four dams allowed salmon to return to an Oregon river.
Environment: Six strategies will simultaneously reduce emissions and help communities prepare
Six broad strategies will tackle the root causes of climate change and help groups prepare for the consequences of global warming. Environmentally sustainable aircraft are slow to take off. Local governments can take a lead in promoting biodiversity.
Environment: Arctic and Europe warming at double the global average
The Arctic and Europe are melting in the heat. Rapid renewable energy transition for Africa will bring multiple benefits and save money. NSW Planning Commission decides all emissions are significant, no matter how small.
Environment: Technological revolutions revolutionise society
Technological advances spark social revolutions. Deforestation can have a net cooling effect. Warming makes droughts more severe. China leads the energy transition but still a long way from net zero.
Environment: Earth is getting hotter faster thanks to humans
We’ll look back on 2024 as the year we sailed passed 1.5. Marine heatwaves in 2024 and 2025 seriously damaged the Great Barrier Reef, again. Insufficient land and money to create enough new forests to offset carbon emissions. Iceland sends a letter to the future.
Environment: Australian Government misleading people about our emissions reductions
Ignore the government rhetoric, Australia’s actual emissions are not falling. NSW Forestry Corporation facing 29 charges of illegal logging. Swift parrot habitat continues to be logged in three states. Trump swimming against the energy tide.
Environment: Too much and too little water causing problems from the tropics to the poles
Three-quarters of World Heritage Sites are threatened by water issues. Habitat for orangutans or electricity for the people? Summer 2024 heatwave caused massive ice melt in the Arctic. Humans, dogs, foxes, SUVs, plastics, climate change – parenting is tough for beach nesting birds.
Environment: Humanity’s big success: turning forests from saviours to spoilers
We’re destroying the ability of forests to mitigate global warming. Extreme weather events cause food price hikes and social unrest. Airlines are ignoring sustainable aviation fuel, but does it matter?
Environment: 18th century vicar describes controlled burning in English countryside
English farmers used controlled burns of gorse 300 years ago. Too hot and dry even for cacti. Urbanisation induces genetic evolution in birds. China powering ahead with the roll out of wind and solar.
Environment: Decisive action needed to avoid unmanageable climate tipping points
Global climate tipping points are getting closer, creating danger zones for the biosphere and human societies. Naturally regenerating forests must be left to grow for longer. The North Atlantic Ocean has swapped cod for nanoplastics.
Environment: Humans are the wisest mammals, but which have the most biomass?
The biomass of marine mammals is almost double that of land mammals. Clean energy investments are increasing but not quickly enough. Illegal gold mining wreaks havoc on the Amazon’s Indigenous communities and environment.
Environment: Judge says advocate and protest to make government responsible for climate damage
Federal Court says Australian government not negligent in failing to protect Torres Strait Islanders from climate change. Human-induced climate change triples current European heatwave deaths but who is responsible for the harm and damage?
Environment: Forget 1.5 degrees C, even 2 degrees C, while forests and peat disappear and natural gas booms
Peatlands are vital for human survival, but we are destroying the few that are left. Australia’s gas industry facing a volatile future. Chinese banks funding the destruction of tropical forests – not good for humans or tigers.
Environment: Ocean acidification has left the safe zone for humans
Seven of the nine planetary boundaries have now been crossed. Civil society calls for major reform of COP meetings. Big banks fund Australian deforestation. China leaving USA behind in the energy transition.
Environment: Ken Henry and Xi Jinping agree nature is critical to productivity
Ken Henry says high-integrity environmental laws will be the government’s first test but new Labor MPs don’t agree. Great Barrier Reef still suffering from heat, agricultural run-off and overfishing. NATO to increase its spend and its emissions.
Environment: Australia declared climate change ‘rogue actor’
A new water economics needed to safeguard supplies of domestic water and make it a common good. Australia’s fossil fuels make it a rich Climate Wrecker. Carbon capture technologies fail to deliver.
Environment: Murray-Darling Plan delivers profits, but not environmental improvement
Murray-Darling Plan has achieved five of seven economic goals but only 2 of 12 environmental ones. Will climate change be good or bad for the economy? Nations’ current emissions reduction policies unlikely to keep global warming under 2oC.
Environment: WA addicted to producing, burning and exporting gas
Albanese government eager to support WA’s gas addiction. Tasmania’s natural environment trashed by deer and loggers. Globally, one square kilometre of trees cleared every 10 minutes. Ecological and spiritual values converge in Chinese temples.
Environment: 5% of animal species currently threatened by climate change
An Australian rodent was the first mammal to be driven to extinction by climate change. Renewables will supply almost all of global electricity’s 4% per year growth. Four personal behaviour changes could remove much of the average person’s carbon footprint.
Environment: Freshwater systems and grasslands, forgotten nature and climate heroes
Human activities are pushing many freshwater fish toward extinction globally and in Australia.
Environment: Australians must defend our right to protest
Dissent and protest are under attack across Australia. Thawing permafrost is a problem for everyone, not just Arctic-dwellers. LNG produces more emissions than coal, oil or gaseous natural gas. Renewables rollouts are up, but so are energy-related greenhouse gas emissions.