Climate
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An economy that shrinks quantity and grows quality
Recent debate on this site about economic growth and environmental protection highlights the very narrow and limiting framing of mainstream economics, and points to the far more positive prospect that is available to us if we can broaden our vision. Continue reading »
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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 world’s youth are not happy. Continue reading »
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Environmental apocalypse? Don’t blame us
Like the environment itself, discussions of our collective future are becoming heated. They are also contradictory, polarised and – in my case, at least – increasingly pessimistic. Continue reading »
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Drastic economic reform needed to address climate change
Realisation is dawning that the climate and environmental crises will not be solved by current national policies. The reason is that the current market economy based on everlasting growth is the prime cause of these crises. Continue reading »
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Environment: Life scientists endorse civil disobedience
Australia’s oceans, Greenland’s Ice Sheet and Antarctica’s 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. Continue reading »
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The global climate change suicide pact
There was a time when leaders fell on their sword when they were defeated in battle or lost their core beliefs, nowadays most do not even resign their privileged positions to resist the existential danger posed to advanced life, including human civilisation. It is long past time to declare a global climate and nuclear emergency. Continue reading »
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An apology to my grandkids for not fighting in the war of our times
While I was on holiday, I noticed a tweet that left me in no doubt about the subject of my first column back. It said: “I genuinely think the next generation will not forgive us for what we have done to them and the world they will have to live in.” Continue reading »
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The transition to a steady-state economy: a reply to Michael Keating
Scientific research shows that the environmental impacts of human civilisation have exceeded several planetary boundaries. To avoid societal collapse and to assist the transition to an ecologically sustainable civilisation, we must transition to a steady-state economy. Continue reading »
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Efforts to combat climate change and biodiversity loss are inseparable as new mass extinction looms
Recently, I had a catch-up conversation on climate change and November’s UN climate change conference (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheikh with one of Hong Kong’s most conscientious students of the subject. Continue reading »
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Environment: It’s a wonderful world …
… as Louis Armstrong famously croaked. Well, perhaps: The temperature’s going up. The rich are getting richer. Wetlands are disappearing. Gas is officially green. Continue reading »
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Environment: Guterres: ‘the ecosystem meltdown is cold, hard scientific fact’
Tell it like it is, António: ‘climate disaster, death sentence, insanity, inconsistent with human survival’. Thank goodness for chocolate and birds. Continue reading »
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Economics: the top-10 mistakes
Richard Barnes laments the wilful blindness of many elites who go snow skiing while turning a blind eye to the causes of the high country’s dying landscape. Barnes says he mostly agrees with author Jeff Sparrow that the current economic system is to blame. Let me count the ways. Continue reading »
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Devastation and blindness in our High Country
One can only hope that the day is not too far away when “I was only doing my job” will be no more a defence against climate crimes than it is against war crimes. Continue reading »
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We need urgent action to save our life support systems
We must modify our sluggish democracy to act urgently, transform our economy, and save our life support systems. The alternative is for economic change to be delivered brutally by nature. Continue reading »
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Sleepers, wake!
For those of us focused on sustainability, we wonder what it would take for a progressive government to wake up and smell the evidence. In other words, how close to collapse does Australia and the world need to be before the government (including its public service) decides it should take the issue seriously? Continue reading »
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‘Amazing!’ Lula applauded for naming Amazon defenders as Brazilian ministers
“Lula’s win was a win for the Amazon,” one global human rights leader said of his environment and Indigenous ministers. Continue reading »
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Best of 2022: Last week, a NSW court jailed me for 15 months for a peaceful climate protest. Hear my story
If you are reading this, then I have been sentenced to prison for peaceful environmental protest. I do not want to break the law. But when regular political procedure has proven incapable of enacting justice, it falls to ordinary people taking a stand to bring about change. Continue reading »
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The short lifespan of technological civilisations and the future of Homo sapiens
In his book ‘Collapse’ (2011) Jared Diamond portrays the fate of societies which Choose to Fail or Succeed. On a larger scale the Fermi’s paradox suggests that advanced technological civilisations may constitute ephemeral entities in the galaxy, destined to collapse over short periods. Continue reading »
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True love never coerces: a meditation for Christmas 2022
Imagine if we did not need to pray for those who die today, violently and unprepared. Imagine if the United Nations members convened in deep silence and resolved to rid the planet of all weapons of mass destruction and to prevent catastrophic climate change. Imagine if the cruelty being inflicted on the people of Ukraine, Continue reading »
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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? Continue reading »
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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. Continue reading »
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Last week, a NSW court jailed me for 15 months for a peaceful climate protest. Hear my story
If you are reading this, then I have been sentenced to prison for peaceful environmental protest. I do not want to break the law. But when regular political procedure has proven incapable of enacting justice, it falls to ordinary people taking a stand to bring about change. Continue reading »
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Environment: COP’s over but climate change is like ‘ol man river …’,
‘… he just keeps rolling along’, destroying homes, communities, health and farming. Continue reading »
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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. Continue reading »
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COP27: Australia promotes fossil fuels as pathway to carbon neutrality
It seems the Australian media still has to be told: COP 27 was a disaster and the glaring flaws in Australia’s grab bag of climate change policies were there to be exposed – if any reporters cared to do so. Continue reading »
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Australian Climate Council’s weasel words demonstrates complete lack of understanding
It seems that the majority of participants in COP27, and indeed the directors of our own peak advisory body, have no comprehension that, if we want to avoid uncontrollable, runaway warming incompatible with life and society as we know it, our global carbon budget is already spent. Continue reading »
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Environment: 1.5 degrees is still alive (just)
The bad news: more evidence of humanity’s callous disregard for the environment and our own future. The good news: sex in the moonlight is not yet dead. Continue reading »
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COP27: Investors are the wrong people to address climate change
The leaders in the creation of the low-carbon infrastructure of the future must be those who will know how to build it, not those whose principal occupation is trading shares on the secondary market. This is why I believe that China, despite its current dependence on coal, is much more likely to achieve its future Continue reading »
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COP 27: Sleepwalking to global armageddon
An article in the prestigious journal Nature shows a dramatic increase in the likelihood of tipping points causing a runway disruption to the globe’s environment. Australia and other governments participating in COP 27 are nevertheless sleepwalking along a path which wrongly assumes a predictable manageable rise in temperatures. Continue reading »
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Australia relies on controversial offsets to meet climate change targets. We might not get away with it in Egypt
It’s small wonder a major fossil fuel producer like Australia has relied so heavily on carbon offsets. Plant new forests – or say you will avoid clearing old ones – and you can keep approving new gas and coal developments. This year, whistleblower Professor Andrew McIntosh claimed up to 80% of these offsets weren’t real. They didn’t Continue reading »
