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 recent articles
18 February 2023
Sunblock for Planet Earth
How best to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: stop burning coal, eat less meat or block out the sun? The first and second look preferable to the third to me.
11 February 2023
Environment: Young people unimpressed by boomers environmental and social neglect
All countries are failing to look after their environments and their people. Long haul flights will continue to generate most CO2. The worlds youth are not happy.
4 February 2023
Environment: Life scientists endorse civil disobedience
Australias oceans, Greenlands Ice Sheet and Antarcticas sea ice are all feeling the heat. One million species are on the edge of extinction. No wonder life scientists are taking to the streets.
28 January 2023
Environment: Its a wonderful world
as Louis Armstrong famously croaked. Well, perhaps: The temperatures going up. The rich are getting richer. Wetlands are disappearing. Gas is officially green.
21 January 2023
Environment: Guterres: the ecosystem meltdown is cold, hard scientific fact
Tell it like it is, Antnio: climate disaster, death sentence, insanity, inconsistent with human survival. Thank goodness for chocolate and birds.
17 December 2022
Environment: melodrama and tragedy worthy of the great storytellers
Hard times lie ahead. Are the Great Expectations of renewable energy, ocean-based removal of CO2 and protein from microbes justified?
10 December 2022
Environment: No reasonable prospect of keeping 1.5 alive
Not one of over 1200 computer simulations provides a reasonable chance of global warming being under 1.5oC in 2100. Climate protester jailed for 15 months in NSW.
3 December 2022
Environment: COPs over but climate change is like ol man river ,
... he just keeps rolling along, destroying homes, communities, health and farming.
26 November 2022
Environment: How to feed 10 billion and predict the next Covid
The global population is now 8 billion but the vast majority make little contribution to global warming. The search is on for ways to feed 10 billion sustainably in 2050.
19 November 2022
Environment: 1.5 degrees is still alive (just)
The bad news: more evidence of humanitys callous disregard for the environment and our own future. The good news: sex in the moonlight is not yet dead.
12 November 2022
Environment: COP meetings keep happening; emissions keep rising
Four reports and Greta Thunberg highlight the failure of 30 years of COP meetings to slow climate change.
5 November 2022
Environment: Greenhouse gases same old winners, same old losers
Whitehaven Coal is selling more coal and making record profits and (apparently) helping countries reduce their emissions. Rich nations should cancel developing nations debt to help them cope with climate change.
29 October 2022
Environment: Cherish old trees, rivers and birds
The worlds old trees, Australias rivers and the USAs birds are in decline. The cause is the same everywhere - failing to respect nature.
22 October 2022
Environment: Rich countries export their social and environmental problems
Self-righteous rich countries export their problems to poor countries. Animal population sizes a third of what they were. Is Direct Air Capture a promising technology?
15 October 2022
Environment: A bleak, hot future for Australia
New data confirms Australias vulnerability to climate change. Nitrous oxide emissions set to become a climate battleground. Answers to where Ive been for the last month.
9 September 2022
Environment: Pacific wants Australian support for strong climate action
Pacific nations want climate action not military bases. Emissions and temperatures keep rising and forest fires keep increasing.
2 September 2022
Climate laws for the environment and for people
A roadmap for reforming Australias climate laws and Chile rewrites its constitution with the environment and people to the fore. Greater warming where and when its coldest.
26 August 2022
Peter Sainsbury's Environment Report: Rewilding the USAs west and saving the Amazons headwaters
Wolves and beavers could recreate the wild West. Indigenous communities fight for the Amazons sacred headwaters. Is your battery killing mine workers?
19 August 2022
This week with Peter Sainsbury on catastrophic Climate Endgame
Scientists call ignoring Climate Endgame dangerous. Bidens persistence navigates the Inflation Reduction Act through Congress. Renewables keep getting cheaper.
12 August 2022
More aquaculture to feed a silent world
Sustainable aquaculture to boost fish supplies. Rich nations fund poors fossil fuel industries. Extinctions silence nature.
5 August 2022
Environment: UN declares right to a healthy environment
Global right to a healthy, sustainable environment declared but governments conspire to hide the truth about climate change, Tassie sanctions the killing of native wildlife and Brazil encourages dangerous mining deep in the Amazon.
29 July 2022
Environment: Australias natural environment sick and getting sicker
Australias environment needs better governments and more respect. Mexican asparagus: nice but very naughty.
22 July 2022
Environment: Prescribed burning makes bushfires worse
Prescribed burning does more harm than good, as do fossil fuel subsidies. How to protect wild species.
15 July 2022
Environment: Four actions to help the oceans help us
Our seas are already seriously threatened and more dangers are emerging but four marine strategies will deliver for human health, the environment and the economy. A circular economy in the food and agriculture industry will dramatically reduce biodiversity loss.
8 July 2022
Environment: Supreme Court gives the world a climate headache
US Supreme Court favours democracy over climate action. Overshooting 2oC of warming will be bad news for ecosystems. Space tourism preparing for launch.
1 July 2022
Environment: Enormous environmental consequences of the war in Ukraine
The conflict in Ukraine is destroying environments and not only in the war zone. Cartoon characters combat ecofascism and Global South nations outline their expectations of Novembers COP meeting in Egypt.
24 June 2022
Environment: Can capitalism deliver the future we want?
We need to reduce all greenhouse gas emissions, not just CO2. Solar and wind slowly replacing coal as Australias source of electricity. Sydney and Canberra middle of the pack for sustainability.
17 June 2022
Environment: Can astronomical phenomena inspire us to solve earthly problems?
Forget war, climate change, famine and dysfunctional economics for five minutes, lift your eyes to the pre-dawn skies and see five of our planetary neighbours.
10 June 2022
Environment: Global climate report and watery things
The global climate in 2021 was not looking good, nor were dams, rivers, the Reef or seagrass.
3 June 2022
Environment: An asset for profit or a space for children to thrive?
Is the natural environment to be commodified for profit or cherished to help children and adults thrive? How to decarbonise Australias transport systems.
27 May 2022
Environment: Steel and cement emissions. Effects of climate change on mammals.
Ways to reduce steel and cement emissions now. Climate change predicted to increase the spread of viruses from other mammals to humans and affect the ability of marine mammals to communicate.
20 May 2022
Environment: Atmospheric CO2 hits 420ppm. Operating mines and wells must close to stay under 1.5C
The level of CO2 in the atmosphere continues to rise and staying under 1.5 degrees of warming will require closing almost half of currently operating fossil fuel wells and mines: regional Australians know this. Conflicts over water are increasing worldwide.
13 May 2022
Environment: Forests, soil and peatlands disappearing
20 million hectares of tropical and boreal forests were lost in 2021. Climate change is destroying the soil crust in arid lands. Peatlands are disappearing globally. It doesnt have to be this way: action is possible.
6 May 2022
Environment: Electricity, extinctions and agroecology
Wind and solar generate a tenth of the worlds electricity but coal still dominates in Australia. Reptiles and marine species face high risk of extinction. Moving from agribusiness to agroecology.
30 April 2022
Environment: Native forests out perform plantations in providing environmental benefits
Native forests deliver more benefits than plantations. Loss and damage, the unloved sibling in climate negotiations. China builds up its environmental legal system.
23 April 2022
Environment: IPCC lays out the gruesome climate facts
Three years to turn the carbon supertanker around. Fortress conservation of forests is killing local communities. Cats and foxes destroy 3 billion Australian native fauna every year.
16 April 2022
Environment: Colonialism, chocolate, Krugman and climate change
The IPCC has accepted that colonialism causes climate change. Options for reducing beef-related emissions. Vastly different population trajectories around the world.
9 April 2022
Environment: Terrestrial and coastal ecosystems destroyed by human activities
Seagrasses are the forgotten but valuable cousins of our coasts. Powerful farmers pay lots and lobby hard to avoid regulation, but methane emissions can be reduced.
1 April 2022
Environment: nobody wants to pay for climate action
The Commonwealth government continues to ignore climate action, while developing countries resist bearing the burden of the renewable energy transition. Scientists say no to solar geoengineering.
26 March 2022
Environment: Pollution destroys lives, the ozone layer and bushland
Profits trump health in sacrifice zones, and pollution from the 2019/20 bushfires may increase Australias skin cancer rate. Dogs destroying bushland.
19 March 2022
Environment: Emissions rising and no green recovery visible
Despite endorsing the IPCCs findings, and rising emissions, Morrison still supports coal development. New climate-social system model identifies central importance of responsive political institutions for controlling global warming.
12 March 2022
Environment: Wealthy are the major CO2 emitters
Victoria turns a blind eye to illegal logging while USA maps protected areas. Rich individuals and nations need to reduce their emissions and eliminate global poverty.
5 March 2022
Environment: Medications damaging nature and humans
Prescribed drugs, government subsidies and deforestation are destroying nature. But nature fights back in Ecuador.
26 February 2022
Environment: Destroying wetlands increases methane emissions
Were destroying wetlands and their methane is killing us. Big Oil cant be trusted but nor can the EUs climate commitments. Boomers leave their great grandkids a tenth of what they enjoyed.
19 February 2022
Sunday environmental round up
Electric cars sales are booming but so are coals, strongly supported by the banks. The Kyoto and Pari agreements fail to keep tabs on military forces greenhouse gas emissions.
12 February 2022
Sunday environmental round-up
Greenhouse gases explain the science of climate change but money, greed and deception explain our failure to tackle it.
5 February 2022
Sunday environmental round up.
Tackling the challenges of feeding 10 billion people, keeping our cities cool and meeting the increasing demand for batteries without destroying the environment.
29 January 2022
Sunday environmental round up.
To limit global warming we must stop producing and burning fossil fuels. But nations and companies plans dont match their grand pledges and rhetoric. Nor with deforestation.
22 January 2022
Sunday environmental round up
Four laws of ecology still relevant 50 years on but obscuring the truth more prevalent. Global warming continues and invasive species threaten Australian wildlife.