Climate
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John Austen and Luke Fraser. Urbane transport policy. Part 1 of 3.
Prime Minister Turnbull made a splash on urban transport recently. He sketched a vision of ‘30 minute cities’ where residents spend on average just one hour a day travelling to regular activities like work and shopping. He also considered mass transit solutions rather than just more motorways. This article is the first of three raising Continue reading »
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Bruce Duncan. Budget ignores growing inequality
Scott Morrison’s Commonwealth budget aims to be politically balanced but, like the Hockey budgets, neglects struggle street. The budget still labours under the neoliberal belief in minimal taxes, small government and maximum freedom for private enterprise. Morrison’s mantra is that cutting taxes on businesses and the wealthy will increase investment, growth and jobs. The trouble Continue reading »
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Richard Eckersley. Wellbeing and sustainability: irreconcilable differences?
Better concepts and measures of quality of life and wellbeing make sustainable development more achievable. The debate about progress and development is converging and merging with that about sustainable development. My analysis of the flaws in equating progress with modernisation, discussed in my previous article, contributes to this debate because it shows the equation counts Continue reading »
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Richard Eckersley. The mismeasure of progress: Is the West really the best?
Western liberal democracies dominate the top rankings of progress indices. But are they the best models of development when their quality of life is, arguably, declining and unsustainable. The measures of human progress and development that we employ matter. Good measures are a prerequisite for good governance because they are how we judge its success. Continue reading »
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Carol Richards, Bree Devin. Supermarkets and food waste.
In this blog on 25 February, I noted that the French parliament has voted to ban large food stores from throwing food away. In the story below, Carol Richards and Bree Devin highlight the way powerful supermarkets in Australia push the cost of food waste onto suppliers and charities. John Menadue At a time when Continue reading »
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Will Steffen. CSIRO and climate change: Making policy based on myths
The recently announced cuts to CSIRO climate science have stunned the Australian research community and sent shockwaves through the international climate research system. Claims and counter-claims are flying around the media, the cybersphere, Senate estimates, and elsewhere. To cut through the claims that are being made in support of the CSIRO’s leadership to gut the Continue reading »
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Robert Manne. Why we have failed to address climate change.
In this article, published in the December The Monthly Essays, Robert Manne describes the major obstacles to addressing climate change. He refers to the unique nature of climate change and the difficulties that it has presented for scientists to persuade the world community about the problem and the need to take action. Robert Manne also Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Privatising Medicare’s payments system and the erosion of Commonwealth Public Service capability.
The government has apparently accepted the advice of the Commission of Audit that Medicare’s payments system should be reviewed with the possibility of privatisation. The payments system includes Medicare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, Aged Care Services and Veterans’ Affairs. It sounds like another expression of neo liberalism, that only the private sector can be efficient Continue reading »
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Frank Brennan. Meeting Pope Francis – the planet and markets.
41 years a Jesuit, I had never met a pope. Back in 1986, I was adviser to the Australian Catholic Bishops on Aboriginal land rights. Pope John Paul II came to Alice Springs, met with Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, and spoke strongly about the rights of Aborigines to retain title to their traditional lands. Continue reading »
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Peter Burdon. Why is the business world suddenly clamouring for a global carbon tax?
Among the various interests at the Paris climate talks, it is arguably the voice of business that has emerged most clearly. Many business leaders are now saying that if the world is intent on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, there must be a worldwide price on carbonand a framework for linking the 55 schemes that exist Continue reading »
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Jon Stanford. Paris Agreement on Climate Change: Implications for Australia
Despite a generally positive reception to the Paris accord on climate change, the ideologues on both sides of the debate regard it as a failure. For the sceptics, the agreement that developing countries (which played a negligible role in causing the problem) can continue to increase emissions is so inequitable that it undermines the whole Continue reading »
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Brendan Mackey. How good is the Paris Agreement?
Finally, we have a new international climate change agreement to guide action post-2020. The Paris conference delivered on its promise thanks to skilful diplomacy by the French, a general sense of good will among nations, dedicated national delegates working through the night more often than not seeking consensus language on difficult issues, along with Continue reading »
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Robyn Eckersley. Australia’s climate diplomacy is like a doughnut: empty in the middle.
There is a profound disconnect between Australia’s international climate diplomacy and its national climate and energy policies. The diplomacy could be cast in positive terms, on the surface at least. During the first week of the climate negotiations in Paris, Australia displayed a preparedness to be flexible and serve as a broker of compromises in Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Malcolm Turnbull on climate change.
Since he became Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull has committed himself to Tony Abbott’s policies on climate change. He supports Direct Action. He supports the Abbott government’s carbon reduction targets. At the Paris Conference, the Turnbull government reaffirmed its commitment to the fuel rebate subsidy for miners. It plans to double coal exports. In his blog Continue reading »
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Travers McLeod. Unusual suspects challenging usual thinking on climate change.
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” Twenty years ago Kevin Spacey uttered this famous line about his alter ego, Keyser Söz, in The Usual Suspects. Keyser Söz isn’t climate change, but he might as well be. Since the film was released an inordinate amount of money has Continue reading »
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Jon Stanford. The Pathway to Two Degrees: Should we ban New Coal Mines?
Leading up to this month’s major climate change conference in Paris, there has been a welcome increase worldwide in the commitment to address climate change generally and, in particular, to restrict global warming to two degrees Celsius. Although they are still insufficient to meet the two degree target, the initial national commitments to be taken Continue reading »
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Allan Patience. Now is the Time for All Good Men and Women to Come to the Aid of the Party
Richard Di Natale has called on the Greens to get ready for government. Well and good. The direction in which he is prodding his party is a rare glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak Australian political landscape. Whether in a coalition (likely with Labor), or in its own right (unlikely), what sort of public Continue reading »
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Climate, Economy, Health, Human Rights, Immigration, refugees, Infrastructure, Media, SERIES: Freedom, opportunity and security, World Affairs
Michael Keating. The role of government in policy renewal.
In thanking Ross Gittins for launching ‘Freedom, Opportunity and Security’, Mike Keating explains the reasons why he and I decided to launch this series, first online and now in a book. Mike Keating’s book launch notes follow. I will also be posting Ross Gittins’ comments. John Menadue. Thank you Ross Gittins and thanks to you all Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The new squatters are taking over more public land.
On a wide front developers and other commercial interests are moving into our public parks, gardens and beaches. They are our new squatters and the community is feeling powerless in the face of this invasion. In earlier blogs I outlined the historic encroachment of private interests on our ‘public commons’ – the land and facilities Continue reading »
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Steve Hatfield-Dodds. Australians can be sustainable without sacrificing lifestyle or economy.
A sustainable Australia is possible – but we have to choose it. That’s the finding of a paperpublished today in Nature. The paper is the result of a larger project to deliver the first Australian National Outlook report, more than two years in the making, which CSIRO is also releasing today. As part of this Continue reading »
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Erica Feller. Good democracy is challenged by mass migration.
Mass migration in a globalised world might well turn out to become, not least from the perspective of democracy, one of the overarching and defining challenges of our time. Syria and the exodus of millions of Syrians to neighbouring states and beyond is currently bringing this home in the starkest of ways. The autonomous sovereign Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Coal is good for humanity! The Tony Abbott story continues.
The messenger may have changed, but apparently not the message. Only this week our new Prime Minister said ‘Can I simply say, the government’s policies are unchanged’ An obvious example of this unchanged policy is that Malcolm Turnbull has agreed to the go-ahead of the $16 b. Carmichael Coal Project in central Queensland. This is Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Is Malcolm Turnbull sacrificing his principles?
The polls show most Australian voters have welcomed Malcolm Turnbull’s election as Prime Minister. I did. It is very early days, but I am concerned by signs that he is bowing very much to the right wing of his own party and former Abbott supporters rather than spelling out clearly his own policies that we Continue reading »
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Nicholas Rowley. Cleaning up the mess on climate policy.
It is one of the rarely considered consequences of the sad story of Australia’s national policy response to climate change, that many of our finest public servants have sadly wasted years of analysis and effort to dutifully serve the demands of their political masters. More than ten years ago analysis by Ken Henry under then Continue reading »
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Mark Carney and climate change – an historic speech
The following are extracts from a speech given by Mark Carney, The Governor of the Bank of England at a Lloyd’s of London dinner on 29 September 2015 He outlines how climate change is a huge financial risk, particularly for investments in unburnable fossil fuel assets. He points out that the vast majority of these Continue reading »
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Climate Change and Refugees.
We have had a wake-up call about how Western and particularly US policies have destabilised the Middle East with the resulting exodus of refugees. Half of the Syrian population has either fled or been displaced within their own country. Climate change in the Middle East is adding to the problem. This is examined in a Continue reading »
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Lynne Strong. Climate change and farming.
Farming in partnership with nature. I live in a very special part of the world. The view from my front verandah has rolling green hills to the left, the ocean to the right and in front of me – the ocean. You can understand why I call it paradise. Our family has been farming in this region Continue reading »
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Stephen Harper. The closing of the Canadian mind.
Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has no greater foreign admirer than Tony Abbott who gushed about him when he visited Ottawa a year ago. Like Tony Abbott, Stephen Harper has attacked science and the media. He has weakened citizenship laws and supports polluters. It sounds very familiar. For an article in the International New York Continue reading »
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Clive Hamilton. Damned Lies, Minister Hunt and Climate Models.
If you believe what you read in the Daily Telegraph saving the planet must mean trashing the economy. That’s their story and they’re sticking to it, no matter what the evidence shows. If the numbers show the opposite, well, they have ways. And so last week the Murdoch tabloid took a bunch of numbers concocted Continue reading »
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David Holmes. Australia’s climate politics on a high wire.
(or – Murdoch and Abbott in climate dial duet) While the politicisation of climate change has transformed climate reporting into something of a circus, the Coalition’s announcement of a 26% emissions reduction target on 2005 levels for Australia by 2030 has surely placed its climate policy on a dangerous high wire. The high wire is Continue reading »
