Climate
-
Climate policy: The widening reality gap
The global warming problem seems increasingly insoluble. The past record shows growing gaps between ambition and achievement, decreasing time in which to act, and governments, including Australia’s, stubbornly sticking to policies that have failed to stop emissions growth. Clues to the reasons behind this can be found in the Treasurer’s address to the Economic and Continue reading »
-
Environment: Plant trees but not to halt climate change
Lots of good reasons to plant trees but stopping climate change isn’t one. Krill – abundant but not for long unless we change our ways. Fossil fuels cause conflict and always have. Continue reading »
-
Environment: Industrial activities produce a third of emissions
Industrial emissions, many hard-to-abate, are increasing. Norway leads the roll-out of EVs but China dominates the number purchased and the production of steel and EV batteries. 40% of amphibians are threatened with extinction. Continue reading »
-
Hallucinatory world: Governments blind as multiple catastrophes besiege human civilisation
Life on Earth is under siege. A chain of tipping points with catastrophic consequences for everyone are being unleashed. Yet governments worldwide remain indifferent to the danger. Indeed, many continue avidly to stoke the very furnaces that will consume our civilisation. Continue reading »
-
Environment: Oceans to the rescue: 7 watery ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
Oceans could reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by a third. Toxic materials from abandoned and currently operational metal mines are polluting half a million kilometres of rivers and their floodplains. What do you know about Tassie Devils? Continue reading »
-
The missing link in Australia’s climate change adaptation strategy: Social infrastructure
We have “likely crossed a tipping point for Australia’s temperate broadleaf and mixed forests when a critical level of heat or drought triggers a massive, devastating event. … Climate change is driving a new era of ‘unnatural disasters’ – and as a country we are not prepared to cope.” – Australian Climate Council, 2021. Continue reading »
-
Environment: On track for 2 degrees of warming within 20 years
Based on what’s actually happening rather than unfulfilled promises, the world will exceed 2oC of warming in the early 2040s and it doesn’t look like a comfortable place to be (not even for succulents). Continue reading »
-
Environment: Australia labelled a ‘Planet Wrecker’
Wind and solar roll-outs are increasing globally but Australia and other Climate Wreckers are ignoring the science and developing new oil and gas fields. Continue reading »
-
Climate disaster: Pope Francis repudiates developed world’s economics and culture
‘It is no longer possible to doubt the human origin of climate change’ (Pope Francis). Continue reading »
-
Curse of the cumulative impacts
There are many actions taken by individuals, corporations, and governments that by themselves might be considered minor but when taken together can substantially cause harm to environmental values. Revision of the federal EPBC Act provides an opportunity to include provisions that will help mitigate adverse effects of these “cumulative impacts” on areas containing threatened species Continue reading »
-
Planned degrowth is needed to stop the collapse of civilisation
An opinion piece (‘Degrowth approach is disastrous’, Canberra Times, 9 September, p.38) by authors from the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) attacked the concept of degrowth to a steady-state economy (SSE) and defended the notion of continuing economic growth on a finite planet. Continue reading »
-
This land cries out in final warning
We need an Indigenous Voice to parliament. We need any other voice that will offset the disastrous self-serving notions of the present fools that govern this country. We are all living under the shadows of the illusions of the colonised mind. Continue reading »
-
Environment: If ‘green growth’ is the answer, humanity needs a new question
‘Green growth’ withers in the heat of evidence. Humanity’s demands are creating a ‘global land squeeze’. Another year of murder for environmental defenders. Continue reading »
-
Environment: Rich countries must do more to advance Africa’s economic and climate transition
African leaders and communities call for action to tackle the social and economic damage done by climate change. Warmer oceans lead to warmer conditions over land. UNESCO still looking for more government action to protect the Great Barrier Reef. Continue reading »
-
A climate of insanity
Inherent in the nature of insanity is the fact that those inflicted by it are unaware of their mental state. Continue reading »
-
Climate collapse – The grim silence of our leaders
None of us has previously witnessed a barrage of extreme weather events of the kind that has been devastating lives across the globe this summer. Continue reading »
-
Earth Systems Treaty: The emerging cross-cultural commitment
“The evidence is compelling that human exceptionalism is a deeply-flawed construct – a grand cultural illusion – that has led modern techno-industrial societies into a potentially fatal ecological trap.” William Rees, Author, The Human Ecology of Overshoot. Continue reading »
-
Environment: Governments and fossil fuel subsidies, the infatuation grows
Doesn’t matter how much harm fossil fuels cause, governments have an ‘Everlasting Love’ for subsidising them, so no surprise that coal and oil consumption is increasing. The global love affair with electricity started in 1950. Continue reading »
-
Group think: Paralysis and the missing ONI climate security report
On assuming office, one of Prime Minister Albanese’s first actions was to task the Office of National Intelligence (ONI) to review the security threats posed by climate change. The report was finalised in late 2022 but not made public. Accordingly, a “release the ONI report” campaign has dominated climate-security discourse over much of 2023. Foreign Continue reading »
-
Imagine a day when the whole planet was at peace
The UN International Day of Peace is next week, September 21st. It is a day for rekindling our noblest aspirations. Imagine even a day when the whole planet was at peace. A day when our most attractive power, our capacity to love, was all one could see. A day when not one person was killed Continue reading »
-
Wilful ignorance drives civilisation collapse
In May 1971, I published a full-page letter in The Australian addressed ‘To Those Who Shape Australia’s Destiny’. It was signed by 730 Australian scientists including Sir Mark Oliphant and Sir Macfarlane Burnett. Continue reading »
-
Government’s abject failure to understand the gas industry’s huge health impacts
Current articles on the government’s climate policies increasingly use words such as reckless, hypocrisy and betrayal referring to approval of coal mines. But it is even more difficult to find words to describe the gas industry’s infliction of pain on humanity by the approval of gas mines. Continue reading »
-
Environment: Andrew Forrest’s climate message to Biden, Modi and Xi
Andrew Forrest makes impassioned plea for governments to hold business responsible for climate action. African countries struggle to extract their natural resources without destroying their environments and people. Continue reading »
-
We’re going nuts, why wouldn’t we?
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted in a profoundly sick society” – Jiddu Krishnamurti Continue reading »
-
What is Albanese hiding? Maybe it’s the experts’ vision of the climate hell ahead
A good way to scare people is to suggest your chief security body has written something so frightening that you can’t possibly let anyone read anything about it. Continue reading »
-
A good start to urgent climate change abatement: end native forest logging now
The native forest logging industry is a fundamental danger to Australia’s natural environment and an utter disaster for climate change policy. Continue reading »
-
Act, or die: the climate and nuclear juggernaut
“When elephants fight the grass dies” – African proverb. At 90 seconds to a midnight and a few decades to +4oC will ’sapiens’ end up on the beach? Continue reading »
-
Climate action: there is no time left
Loud warnings of climate disaster continue. We could be in for a catastrophe from which there is no recovery. But we are dawdling along. It is time for more decisive action. Continue reading »
-
Breaking the suicidal impasse
In the last few months events have occurred globally which indicate an astonishing, but not unexpected, acceleration in the pace of climate change. The world has now entered a new era of extremely dangerous climate impacts which are already proving catastrophic in many parts of the world. The factors which hitherto have constrained warming, such Continue reading »
-
Environment: Eat more plants to save the world
Vegans and vegetarians do less damage to the environment than meat-eaters. TotalEnergies and World Rugby team up in Paris to play a dirty game. Tips to become a better recycler. Continue reading »