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environment
environment December 2, 2023
The climate wars may be over, but the battle continues. Now, the climate deniers have become renewables deniers. Australia is engaged in the most significant economic, industrial and social transformation – the transition to renewable energy...
indigenous affairs November 18, 2023
Life in the time of polycrisis
Why does so much feel like it’s going wrong, all at the same time? Why do so many of us feel this sense of impending doom? According to experts, we are living through a “polycrisis”, a tangled mess of multiple crises, all happening at once. In the...
environment November 11, 2023
Put climate at the heart of environment law
The first fossil fuel project approved under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act was given the green light with almost absurd haste. In January 2001, less than six months after Australia’s new environmental protection law...
environment October 7, 2023
Australia’s compromised climate negotiators
Sitting in a bar in Manhattan recently, there for Climate Week NYC and the United Nations Climate Ambition Summit, I watched as Australians from both government and the private sector worked the room. I’d been told our negotiators had a reputation...
environment September 30, 2023
Climate change and the fire season ahead
Recently, I tried to help organise hazard reduction burns in my fire-prone local area. For months it was too wet to burn, due to three years of rain. When it finally seemed as if it was dry enough last week, it was too hot, windy and dangerous. That...
environment September 2, 2023
Most governments don’t think, plan and manage with a view to the longer term – but Treasurer Jim Chalmers has claimed the latest intergenerational report is the basis for action. These reports, typically published every five years to provide an...
environment August 5, 2023
The case for a global crisis centre
It is with mounting despair that I note several mega threats to our planet and to humanity seem to be simultaneously gathering considerable momentum, yet governments and policy authorities are simply ignoring the severity and urgency of the...
environment July 1, 2023
Climate crisis deepens with El Niño
As a climate scientist, it’s becoming increasingly hard to know what to say to the public as horrifying evidence of a worsening crisis continues to mount. In recent weeks record-setting megafires burned through Canada, unleashing a plume of toxic...
environment May 20, 2023
The man at the heart of Australian climate decisions
If you wanted a symbol of Australia’s climate policy, you could do worse than look at the story of Grant King. King is the chair of the Climate Change Authority, the independent government agency legislated to advise the government on climate policy...
environment May 6, 2023
If the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change, a complete transition away from fossil fuels is inevitable. So it stands to reason that shareholders and investors in fossil fuel companies should pressure boards and management to address this...
environment April 1, 2023
What the safeguard means for the climate wars
The climate wars are far from over. They will not be over until the fossil fuel industry stops waging them. While their progress has been slowed in recent years, the relentless bombardment of our future by the coal and gas industries continues...
