Letters to the Editor
The Enlightenment betrayed
October 28, 2025
The return of the Dark Ages of religious bigotry, superstition and unreason could not be better illustrated by the fact that supposedly intelligent people can take seriously the idea that a god, whose very existence is contested, has decided that the Jewish people are the chosen ones. What is even more extraordinary is that other supposedly sentient human beings from outside that self-interested group are prepared to give a moment's credibility to such a rationally and factually outrageous claim. What is never mentioned when this claim to being chosen is made is that the Torah is filled with...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The three core myths driving Israel’s war on Palestine
Moral blindness
October 28, 2025
Whilst Justin Glyn may be physically blind, he displays a moral clarity that is admirable and which our political leaders in Australia demonstrate a total incapacity to mirror. Their reflexive moral cowardice demonstrates the duplicity at the heart of a West that emptily lectures the rest of humanity about our moral superiority, while every day demonstrating its mendacity and fraudulence in our actions. It also clearly reflects our continued disgraceful racism as we fawn over European Zionist mass murderers and colonialists whilst ignoring an occupied and abused other. This is a superbly written J'Accuse that reveals the...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Raise the double standard high
The importance of transparency in public discourse
October 27, 2025
John Anderson’s contribution to the Boyer Lecture series largely focused on diminished trust in government, lack of civility in public discourse and the threat to democracy. However, Anderson’s account has significant omissions. He fails to acknowledge widespread public policy failures, the corrosive impact of concentrated media ownership and the lack of transparency in decision-making at all levels of government. He laboured over the housing crisis and home ownership, but other policy failures were ignored. Perhaps this explains Anderson’s two most egregious omissions and which pose the biggest threats to democracy and social cohesion. Firstly, the rise in inequality...
Brenda Tait from Northcote, Victoria
In response to: John Anderson: Our civilisational moment
It depends who is doing the measuring
October 27, 2025
I thank Alex for his thoughtful analysis which summarises pretty well the fact that, as in so many other areas of life, the Western domination of the way progress is measured and who does it, leaves some pretty important questions about the accuracy of these measures unanswered. China graduates nearly four times the number of STEM students per year than the US and is now far and away the largest filer of patents. Currently, China files around half the world total of patents and increasingly more than the US since 2015. That has produced a significant leadership for...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: As Nobel laureates show, the US can’t take tech lead over China for granted
Congrats to John Schumann
October 27, 2025
I found this a beautifully written, clear and thus impressive article. Thank you, Mr Schumann.
Chris Halloway from Coral Sea (live in Wollongong)
In response to: Article on Trump's appropriation of Christianity
Misplaced nuclear optimism
October 27, 2025
Hannah Ritchie has great insights about using data to determine the best use of resources to lower emissions. Her optimism around nuclear is debatable. Most nuclear accidents go unreported. American engineer and historian Thomas Wellock has published an account of the seemingly casual attitude within the US nuclear industry called Safe Enough? A History of Nuclear Power and Accident Risk. Analysts quoted by Wellock, and a 2016 study published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, all predict a serious accident quite soon. Wellock’s reviewer Daniel Ford did some similar calculations after Three Mile Island. “The numbers suggested that another...
Fiona Colin from Melbourne
In response to: Realism and optimism on energy transition
A bunch of redundant Cold War warriors
October 26, 2025
Our intelligence establishment has managed to continue to produce a long line of Cold War clones without imagination, intellect or policy skills. They have survived by dint of simply repeating what they are told by their real masters, MI6 and the CIA. They ably reflect the paranoid ignorance of those bodies that have failed almost completely to ever get any intelligence assessment anywhere near the mark. But, of course, such people flourish in agencies that have no outside assessment and oversight. They cover their failures in secrecy justified by national security. Good luck to this new boss, she...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: New Australian national intelligence chief faces a people challenge
Balance versus truth
October 26, 2025
The control that the Zionists have established over public opinion in the West is not a fly-by-night affair. The history of that political movement over the last century and a half has been one that recognised the vital importance of controlling the narrative in the mainstream media. It has spent the entire period concocting that narrative and placing key people in major mainstream outlets to ensure that narrative is the only one allowed. Many studies by academics and policy experts testify to the success of that narrative in shaping the public mind. The narrative began to lose its...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Chris Sidoti on the International Court of Justice Gaza ruling
Reason and rant
October 26, 2025
For anyone with even the remotest claim to sanity and coherence, it is an immense task to sensibly compare Xi Jinping and the orange Donald. They appear to exist on entirely different planets, or more accurately to exist in two different eras. The Donald would have fitted perfectly into the Dark Ages of Europe when superstition, fanatical religion, irrational violence and justice by the sword were the hallmarks of the age. His infantile narcissism and psychotic and vengeful nature was common amongst the kings and emperors of the age. Xi, on the other hand, is the highly trained...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Trump, Xi and the ‘green paradox’: How China is building a climate-proof future
Misinformation during the election
October 26, 2025
It is impossible to evaluate the analysis carried out by the researchers who reported on the survey they carried out in the absence of the identity of the statements that they said were false, and which the respondents were asked to comment on. I do not know how we the readers of this article can form any view about the value and usefulness of their survey, and the significance of the seriousness of the statements said in some way to be false or misleading. This omission renders useless the publication of the report by the researchers in the...
John Trew from Sydney
In response to: Misinformation was rife during the 2025 election. New research shows many people were unable to identify it
Unsupported opinions on the energy transition
October 26, 2025
Michael Edesess’ uncritical review of Hannah Ritchie’s book on energy transition fails to back up their shared opinions on important issues: 1. Levelised cost of energy comparisons of energy technologies are not flawed when used and interpreted correctly; they are the standard method in electric power engineering. 2. World leading research groups on the energy transition, such as LUT and Stanford, recognise the land-use limitations of large-scale bioenergy and therefore do not include it in their scenarios. 3. Nuclear power failed to grow beyond its maximum global generation in 2006 because it’s too expensive, too dangerous, too...
Mark Diesendorf from BEROWRA HEIGHTS
In response to: Realism and optimism on energy transition
Step 1: Pick up a book...
October 26, 2025
Since 2010, we have known that 44% of Australians are not functionally literate; i.e. they do not have the skills to understand, let alone be critical of, what they are reading. Is it any wonder that a significant segment of the population cannot identify election misinformation? Speaking as a former teacher, I maintain, one of the weakest links is the training, recruitment and ongoing up-skilling of teachers. I worked alongside teachers who thought Captain Cook bought the First Fleet to Australia, and that he personally slaughtered thousands of Indigenous Australians by his own hand. Also, these...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Misinformation was rife during the 2025 election. New research shows many people were unable to identify it
Clear and succinct
October 26, 2025
I would like to commend Michael Keating’s article to readers. It is clear, succinct, and taught me a lot – not just about Jim Chalmers’ changes but also about government concerns around equity in the superannuation scheme.
Constance Pond from Hornsby
In response to: Superannuation and the Canberra Press Gallery's fantasies
A just peace the only way to lasting security
October 26, 2025
Stewart Sweeney has reminded us of the important distinction between negative peace (the absence of violence) and positive peace (the presence of justice). Peace researcher Johan Galtung made a further distinction between direct violence (eg being killed by an enemy bullet) and structural violence, the harms that accrue from punishing social and economic conditions. While direct violence has been committed by both sides in the Gaza conflict, albeit hugely disproportionately, only the Palestinians have suffered long-term structural violence. Examples include the dehumanising impact of the “security wall” — declared a violation of international humanitarian and human rights law by...
Colin Sindall from St Kilda, Victoria
In response to: War without end, peace without justice
At last! Some long-term thinking
October 24, 2025
Is Fred Zhang to become another frustrated citizen of the Lucky Country, or are we about to make an investment in a future that takes it beyond rolling over to have our belly scratched and our food bowl raided? The technology that has been determined on these shores and developed overseas is legendary. From the black box carried by every plane flying to the solar cell technology employed globally, we have squandered opportunities to make Australia a technology and manufacturing powerhouse. With the geopolitical order shattering and climate change about to not just shift the goalposts, but to...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: China, US or us? Australia’s Upper Path in the global minerals race
Manipulation defeated by the young
October 24, 2025
As an 80-year-old, I have an abiding belief in the young who may save the West from the consequences of the indifference and ignorance of us oldies! This article re-enforces that belief, as does the their actions in saving the environment. It has been said by someone wise that we do not inherit the earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children. They are going to make sure we give it back in a livable form!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The crumbling illusion: Why American public opinion on Israel is shifting
Decency and humanity – many Jews demonstrate that
October 24, 2025
I have never doubted the feelings of millions of Jews around the world towards the obscene criminality being committed in their names. This article is the best illustration of that humanity so far!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Hundreds of prominent Jews and Israelis urge world powers to hold Israel account
Daoism and diplomacy
October 24, 2025
Fred has explained well the subtlety of the Daoist philosophy which originated between the 6th and 4th centuries BC. It well illustrates the continuity and sophistication of Chinese civilisation over millennia. If Chinese culture is the great granddaddy, then the West is the wayward great, great, great, great grandchild that is yet to mature. The problem for the West is that we were the arrogant descendants of the primitive tribes roaming Europe in the Dark Ages when Chinese civilisation had been flowering for thousands of years and we retained the primitive instincts of fight or flight long after...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: China, US or us? Australia’s Upper Path in the global minerals race
And Australia does same old, same old
October 24, 2025
We saw after the UN had identified more than 1000 Israeli actions that broke the [January 2025] ceasefire, Australia doing precisely nothing to recognise the offences. Now, with a widely-documented Israeli flip of the bird to the latest ceasefire conditions — and which contravenes, as usual, international law — we see Australia leaping into inaction. How soon will it be before our foreign minister issues a serious concern statement calling on Hamas to stop whingeing and get on with starving and dying from lack of aid as they are supposed to?
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: After ICJ ruling, can UN relief agency UNRWA resume full Gaza operations?
Handing over our lunch money
October 24, 2025
If you were unsure what gaslighting or coercive control was, you need only look at the Trump administration to receive a master class. Gaslighting: Trump declares at regular intervals, I am the peacemaker while funnelling billions to perpetuate a genocide that could not have happened without his ongoing support. I have created peace, he declares while still allowing Israel to starve and bomb innocent Palestinians because hostage bodies are still under rubble caused by his bombs. Coercive control: World leaders stumble over themselves to prostrate before Trump, to land a photo at the White House, believing that...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Albanese and Rudd sold out freedom of the press this week
Failure of water fluoridation
October 23, 2025
Clearly, the incorporation of dental health services into Medicare is long overdue. But Lesley Russell has glossed over the obvious question: “Why isn’t dental health better in Australia, one of the most extensively fluoridated countries in the world?” The answer is given implicitly in the scientific reviews by the Cochrane Library, the gold standard in impartial systematic reviews of medications and medical procedures. Cochrane’s latest report on fluoridation, published in 2024, reviewed 157 non-randomised studies. (There are no double-blind randomised controlled trials supporting claims of enormous benefits of fluoridation.) Cochrane found that fluoridation may reduce dental caries by...
Mark Diesendorf from BEROWRA HEIGHTS
In response to: Dental health – time for a small, cost-effective revolution
Sold out to capitalism
October 23, 2025
What we all need to learn from this latest round of arse-licking is that Trump is the end result when government sells out to capitalism. It has been obvious for a long time and Australian governments have foolishly followed the US lead like lemmings over a cliff. The Teals and the latest election result may well be an indicator that the electorate has woken up and had enough. With the LNP brawling among themselves, unlike the carbon tax and the No vote, they may not be able to get their millionaire/media mates together to win back their voters. ...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Albanese and Rudd sold out freedom of the press this week
The Americanisation of Australia
October 23, 2025
The insidiously overwhelming Americanisation of Australia is proceeding apace, but we cannot yet predict when our nation will be referred to as Southwest America (formally Australia) nor can we predict when China will be referred to as Northwest America (formally China). The increasingly despised and contemptible US has become a appalling moral wreck of a country, yet its drongo population has allowed Trumpian imbecility to worsen hourly without rejecting its administration entirely. Trump should never been elected.
Peter Bright from Tasmania
In response to: Albanese and Rudd sold out freedom of the press this week
No one size fits all – a lesson for the West
October 23, 2025
A superb analysis of the dogged blindness of the West to the reality that their system is not only the only system, but potentially far from the best. But also a great illustration of the way history and culture determine what is best rather than having a system shoved down your throat which ignores that history and culture. This should be a text in every management and foreign policy course in the West.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: To avert war, the West must shatter the mirror by which it views China
Racism: Redux or just perpetual?
October 23, 2025
The most detestable characteristic of European Christian civilisation is its long-standing and almost genetic predisposition to a mindset of racial superiority. That is exercised serially on the chosen racial inferior people of the day. For centuries, it was the European Jews blamed for the death of Christ and thus to be removed or at the very least excluded from polite society. Then, during the long period of brutal and criminal imperialism and colonialism, it was the brown-skinned inhabitants of much of the rest of the world. We still inhabit that mean-spirited and vacuous space. That is easily demonstrated...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Islamophobia in Australian schools: What the Special Envoy’s report means for ed
Winter is coming in Gaza
October 23, 2025
Meg Schwarz makes a good point about women and the Board of Peace (what would Golda Meir think?) But I sense a lack of urgency with winter coming again in Gaza. Where are the six engined Antonovs which transported portable housing to Cambodia after the defeat of Pol Pot? Where is the move for a new prefabbed harbour on the Gaza coast better than the US constructed one 18 months ago which failed in a storm? Germany and China, for example, are good at modular housing and engineering; get them positively and urgently involved. Our government is contributing one...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: Women are missing from peace negotiations, from strategic decision making
Labor's pusillanimity
October 23, 2025
This reminds me of what Cassius said to Brutus “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,/But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” (Julius Caesar). The problem is the whole West seems to be underlings to a clearly demented and power-hungry narcissist!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Albanese and Rudd sold out freedom of the press this week
Joining in the madness
October 23, 2025
Good article, Greg Barns! Would we have known about this outrage if we simply relied on the ABC to tell us? Thank you. Shouldn't we now also be asking why the ABC didn't embarrass the prime minister and ambassador by publicly boycotting the event? Once more the Australian Government's appeasement — like that of so many other governments — is simply endorsing the rogue régime this criminal now heads. This cannot end well. The prime minister and the ambassador, by their indulgence, are not only undermining their own standing in this polity but they erode our Commonwealth's dignified...
Bruce Wearne from BALLARAT CENTRAL
In response to: Albanese and Rudd sold out freedom of the press this weekAlbanese and Rudd
Global warming still not scary enough
October 23, 2025
In spite of the fact that global ice melting is happening with shocking speed, future melting is unpredictable enough for it to be left out of key IPCC calculations. The sea level rise figures from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change only reflect the expansion of warming water. AdaptNSW, a branch of the NSW Government, says, “include processes associated with the melting of ice sheets (and) NSW could (see) sea level rises of up to 2.3 metres by 2100 and 5.5 m by 2150”. It is not just the clear denial of people such as Barnaby Joyce preventing...
Lesley Walker from Naarm (Northcote)
In response to: The problem of climate change denialism
We need a song
October 23, 2025
John Schumann is frustrated because the church doesn’t articulate a case against Trump. Fair enough, though he may be surprised at how many parish pulpits are careful to apply the gospel to Trump and all his works. My frustration is that the song writers have not given us some protest songs. We are so grateful to musicians who did so much to unite opposition to the Vietnam War. But where are the songs of protest against Trump and Trumpiness? John, please help.
Stephen Williams from Newcastle NSW
In response to: Muted response to Trump's appropriation of Christianity
Climate change: It's time to panic
October 22, 2025
Chas Keys was remarkably sanguine in addressing climate denialism. Along with the biodiversity crisis, climate change is the greatest threat the planet faces. Those who deny the massive evidence surrounding climate change, deserve public condemnation and ridicule because they threaten the quality of the future of our children and grandchildren, indeed their very existence. What Trump has done in the US in removing even the mention of climate change in some government departments, in abandoning the Paris Agreement, and bolstering the fossil fuel industries while throwing a spanner in the works of the renewable energy transition, is profoundly irresponsible....
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: The problem of climate change denialism
Desperation is the driving force
October 22, 2025
Requiem for Gaza could just as easily be reimagined as Requiem for the Rules-based International Order. Desperation is the driving force. Here in the West we are beset by desperation on so many levels. There is the desperation of climate change, a looming development we do our best to ignore. There is the desperation of a debt-driven financial collapse, another looming development we are also doing our best to ignore. And there is the desperation of military inadequacy which the wars in Palestine and Ukraine have shown. In Israel, the desperation is fuelled by the above compounded by the...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Chris Hedges' Edward Said memorial lecture: ‘Requiem for Gaza’
Climate change is real alright, and it’s us causing it
October 22, 2025
Chas Keys poses an interesting question. If it’s not human activity causing the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we’re in more trouble than we realise. Not that we aren’t already facing enormous difficulties. The climate data being collected makes it abundantly clear the planet is entering the feedback climate loop peer-reviewed science has warned of since the 1970s. We’ve had half a century to validate we’ve fully evolved as thinking hominids. That we haven’t is confirmed by the depth of climate denialism across the world. Whether it’s compelled by greed, ideology or ignorance is immaterial, the outcome’s...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: The problem of climate change denialism
Heath Robinson and Humpty Dumpty
October 22, 2025
I love Peter's reference to Heath Robinson in this article. I have always looked, after over 50 years involved with governments in Australia, at the similarity of much government policy formulation and implementation as an excellent simile with the wonderfully complicated structures that he was an expert in. Trump's plan — and it is a great exaggeration to call it such — not only has the imagination of Heath Robinson in its gratuitous complexity, but also encompasses Humpty Dumpty's propensity to invent new meanings for words.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: At best, a respite for Gazans
Palestinian dispossession
October 22, 2025
While the devastated landscapes may look similar, the difference between a post-nuclear Japan and Palestine could not be greater apart from the fact that US bases are still located on Japanese soil. The issue in Gaza is where to relocate the Palestinians because the Israelis don't want them on their “God-given” (including Jerusalem) land and the religious right need the return of the the Jews so they can benefit.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: It's too early to discuss 'what next' for Gaza
Bastardry on steroids
October 22, 2025
This article is a brilliant catalogue of the continuation of the centuries-long history of the atrocities committed by the allegedly Christian US in spreading the exact opposite of what it claims to stand for. Democracy doesn't get a guernsey anywhere in this history of invasion, subversion, theft and mass murder. But as the US empire deservedly crumbles, the rest of the world, excluding the European and Australian satraps, begin to resist. Russia, Iran and China look like helping the Venezuelan people to guarantee that this attempt at overthrowing an elected government will not succeed. More power to their...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Trump CIA intervention in Venezuela risks another US war of choice, experts warn
Science and stupefaction
October 22, 2025
At its base, the anti-climate change idiocy of Trump and those who share his scientific philistinism is inherently illogical, uninformed and plainly stupid. To say, as he often does, that the work of tens of thousands of highly qualified climate scientists is simply not believable carries some far greater implications, either about his purchase by the oil, coal and gas corporations or his utter incapacity for logical thought. The scientific method is now understood and supported by the vast bulk of humanity. That scientific method is common across literally all areas of human knowledge, with the notable exception of...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Trump is pushing allies to buy US gas. It’s bad economics – and a catastrophe for the climate
Lies, damned lies and statistics
October 21, 2025
This is the phrase that sprang to mind on reading Michael Keating's article on migration in Australia. While not really accusing him of lying, I would suggest he is cherry-picking data to support his case, which is basically to maintain high levels of population growth in Australia. According to the latest figures from ABS, population growth was 1.6% in the year to March this year, an increase of 423,400 people, of which net overseas migration was 315,900 or about three quarters. Yes, 1.6% is a lot better than the Third World rates of 2.5% we saw in 2023, but...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: The migration debate in Australia
It's too early to discuss 'what next' for Gaza
October 20, 2025
It is far too early to even begin to contemplate what next for Gaza, which is now the theme of much well-intentioned commentary. There is barely a ceasefire, with Israel killing dozens of Palestinians over the past few days, and looking for every Hamas did it pretext to kill more. People are still starving to death, with the arrival of only limited food supplies. There are no functional hospitals. There are no foreign press to witness the carnage. And it is utterly unclear what the Trump plan now envisages. Now more than ever we should be applying all...
Richard Barnes from Melbourne
In response to: As Gaza starts to rebuild, what lessons can be learned from Nagasaki in 1945?
Beyond delusional
October 20, 2025
Are we still entertaining the delusion that the suffering of the Palestinian people is over? Are we still believing that a ceasefire is intact when, as I write, Israel has just dropped scores of bombs on the Gaza Strip in violation of the barely two-week-old agreement? Are we still deluded that Trump and Netanyahu’s plan to create a new Miami in Gaza has changed into an altruistic endeavour? It is sheer denial to now write about reconstruction and rebuilding when Palestine is still being bombarded, innocent Palestinians are being torn apart by tank and drone fire and mothers are...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: As Gaza starts to rebuild, what lessons can be learned from Nagasaki in 1945?
A step in the right direction
October 20, 2025
I think Michael McKinley's idea has merit. This doesn't mean the politicians will buy into it... how after all, could anyone question their decision-making capability? They are the government after all. The article reflects the lack of independent strategic thinking at government level, which the government, on first reflex at least, will be likely to deny or ignore, but which, in my view is the case. Michael's idea may not be the final version of what is required, or of what may possibly evolve... but it is a step in the right direction.
Peter Kent from Melbourne
In response to: An immodest proposal for an ideal source of strategic policy advice
Another brick in the wall
October 20, 2025
John Frew's recent fine polemic reiterates much of the frustration described by the late Sir Ken Robinson. What gets measured gets manipulated and learning has degenerated into indoctrination. Even our red brick universities have degenerated into ideological battlegrounds and inculcated graduands are just another brick in the wall.
Bernard Corden from Spring Hill, Brisbane QLD 4000
In response to: Counting what doesn’t count:
Delusional world
October 20, 2025
As proven by today's headlines, anyone who thought that Israel could be trusted to abide by a lasting peace is as delusional as the president who thinks he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for organising it. Israel won't stop until they alone own the land that “God” gave them, including Jerusalem.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Gaza has a ceasefire, now Palestine needs self-determination
Climate tipping points
October 20, 2025
It seems our governments lack the moral courage to do what the sciences, both physical and economic, demand to stave off Julian Cribb’s spine-chilling list of imminent climate tipping points. So, we, the people, must force the issue. If we can activate some social tipping points, people pressure might still help us rapidly spread the technologies, behaviours, social norms and structural reorganisation we need to delay the physical tipping points. If enough people start to demand, among other things, the removal of fossil fuel subsidies and divest from assets linked to fossil fuels, we may still move...
Lesley Walker from Naarm (Northcote)
In response to: Tipping, tipping, tipping... the dominoes fall
The Apocalypse is coming
October 20, 2025
According to the Global Tipping Points Report 2025: “Already warm-water coral reefs are crossing their thermal tipping point and experiencing unprecedented dieback... This is sickening news, not just because so much beauty and biodiversity is being lost, but also the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people who depend on coral reefs. The world is likely to hit 2°C warming between 2034 and 2052. According to New Scientist (28 May), the world could experience a year above 2°C of warming as early as 2029. The chances are slim, but it's only four years away. What happens at 2°C?...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Tipping, tipping, tipping... the dominoes fall
Israel and the ICJ
October 20, 2025
To add to the argument of Paul Heywood-Smith, the prophet Jonah was sent to preach repentance to the people of the city of Nineveh (Mosul). The people did repent, a response cited by Jesus as exemplary. Nineveh was a long, long way beyond even the Euphrates River, which the blasphemous political readings of Judaism might fancifully assert is part of a God-given Israel. (And by the way, how does God caring so much for the non Jewish people of Nineveh square with the political chosen people interpretation of Jewish fundamentalists? Or with the numerous prophetic references in the Old...
David Moloney from Seaford
In response to: Israel’s response to the International Court of Justice
Popular action can overcome existential despair
October 20, 2025
Julian Cribb has, in recent articles, summarised with authority the dangers we now face with our oceans , with our forests , and with our water. His summary of imminent tipping points encapsulates the urgency of our predicament. David Spratt has highlighted the shortcomings of the National Climate Risk Assessment. Cribb details the risks of misinformation. Our future looks grim, but policymakers — disproportionately influenced by vested interests — seem reluctant to explain this clearly to the electorate. Popular scepticism continues to hamper effective environmental protection. Despair reflects the sense of an individual’s incapacity to generate change in...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Tipping, tipping, tipping... the dominoes fall
Speak up, Australia
October 17, 2025
Appreciation to Wayne McMillan who, in praising Greta Thunberg, calls for Australians to “write to their politicians and wake them up from their moral and ethical slumber of inaction”. We may live in a democratic country but most of our politicians are captured by gambling, fossil fuel and other lobbying groups. We can’t sit back and allow these industries to pursue profit at all cost. Speak up Australia.
Amy Hiller from Kew, Melbourne
In response to: Is Greta Thunberg the lone voice for justice in our world?”
Killing with chooks
October 17, 2025
Mark Macdonald is perfectly correct that antibiotic resistance (ABR) is a major threat to the human future. Unfortunately, even with the generous allocation of word space in Pearls & Irritations, it is not possible to enumerate every case of purblind, human stupidity. Some have to be taken as read! That said, ABR is sure to kill an awful lot of people come the mid-century, especially if we continue to use antibiotics just to create heavier chooks and fatter pigs, while carefully nurturing the zoonotic pestilences of the future. Indeed, we could regard ABR as a byproduct of...
Julian Cribb from Canberra, ACT
In response to: Global collapse