Beyond the appalling consequences of the Gaza war Netanyahu’s full scale attack on the credibility and legitimacy of the UN and its institutions is in danger of inflicting lasting damage by instilling a Western moral exceptionalism. (more…)
Jeremy Webb
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COP 29: grossly inadequate funding signals a deepening East–West divide
Developing countries at COP 29 presented the Western world with an annual US$1trillion financial transfer bill for the cost of their profligate carbon fuelled global warming inducing industrialisation. That sum was no NGO rule of thumb figure but one produced by an organisation funded by Western governments themselves – the International Energy Agency, the world’s foremost body dealing with energy. Despite these credentials, the West saw fit to radically discount its bill by two thirds to US$300 billion. (more…)
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The US on the road to fascism: a time to loosen our ties
The fascist trend in America’s politics portends a lasting erosion of the underpinnings of the ties which have bound Australia to its most important ally and provides a powerful reason for us to loosen these ties. (more…)
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Israel: rogue state or righteous ally?
As Israel risks yet further charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in its siege of northern Gaza, its defence of the indefensible is built on a preposterous inversion of morality. That is, the portrayal of Israel as the West’s protector of its very civilisation in a sea of evil and a bastion of democracy. (more…)
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The unsustainable costs of war
In a world of simultaneous military and environmental crises our capacity to finance both has become unsustainable. Globally, military expenditure over the past decade has been rising at double that of GDP, reaching an all-time high of $2.4 trillion in 2023. (more…)
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The US and Australia: drill baby drill/drill mate drill
A number of new studies highlight an embarrassing fact: Australia is playing a not insubstantial and growing role in slowing the reduction of global carbon emissions. By diligently increasing the development of unwanted new gas and coal fields we are only adding to Trump’s exhortation ‘drill baby drill’ with ‘drill mate drill’. (more…)
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Will famine in Gaza turn Netanyahu and Gallant into war criminals?
With the ICJ ordering a cessation of Rafah hostilities there is now close to a certainty Netanyahu and defence minister Gallant will be charged with a war crime. (more…)
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Grotesque claims: Students revolt against Western media misinformation
Heralded as the largest this century, the pro-Palestinian student demonstrations in the US and globally are putting into stark relief the systemic failure of Western media and Governments to accurately and responsibly report on the Gaza conflict. As they did during the Vietnam war years, it is students who have refused to accept the way in which the Gaza war is portrayed by mainstream media. (more…)
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The great winner picking winner stopping show
In that newspaper of record of extraordinary bias – The Australian – there is much preaching about the sanctity of the market mechanism and the absolute folly of the government’s plan to subsidise investment in new industries. Such sharp economic brains have not, however, cared to admonish nor demand we terminate the massive subsidies given to the fossil fuel industry. Nor have they raised the irony that it is this industry which arguably needs subsidies least. The Australia Institute projects fossil fuel subsidies over the next 3 next years at $57 billion. Currently they are running at $11 billion annually. A small selection of where they are going in Western Australia is as follows: (more…)
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Australia’s disgraceful diversion of responsibility over Gaza war crimes
It seems our PM and Foreign Minister remain able only to show a carefully graduated and modified ‘outrage’ over the death of an Australian aid worker in Gaza. Expressed directly to Netanyahu, Albanese could only deliver restrained diplomatese: sought was a “thorough investigation” with “full accountability and transparency”. That hardly rocked Netanyahu to the core: his response – it was a mistake but such things inevitably happen in war – bordered on the offensive. (more…)
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Firing up the Palestinian pressure cooker
It’s patent weakness suggests the US will show no great spine in leveraging a two state solution. (more…)
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Ukraine: the dangerous economics of the war of production
After two years of bloody trench warfare and aerial annihilation the economics of the war in the Ukraine are putting the means to end it yet further out of reach. With an avalanche of armaments being poured into the military vortex, the consequences of the unacceptably large losses of life and further massive destruction of people’s habitats and welfare are becoming of somewhat secondary concern to the US and Russian protagonists. Their involvement has become an existential battle between Western values and the evils of authoritarianism and western imperialism. (more…)
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The COP and climate change: a spent force
The latest update by the ANU’s Institute for Climate Energy and Disaster Solutions has issued another frank, distressing prognosis. Professor Howden – a vice chair of the IPCC and director of the ANU Institute – warns that the annual Conference of Parties (COP) is not going to deliver global temperatures under 1.5C. (more…)
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The US and Australia: tethered to Israel’s genocide?
With Netanyahu now declaring Israel will not accept the creation of a Palestinian state the burning question is how the US will react. To complicate matters Netanyahu has also said that the war against Hamas will continue for months enlightening the world to the fact that the slaughter of civilians will continue. To this course of action Israel has been able to lock in US support. (more…)
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Abject failure: COP28 is sealing the globe into climate armageddon
Chris Bowen would have us believe that actually mentioning the words ‘fossil fuels’ and a transition away from them was a “turning point” in the history of COP negotiations. What is he smoking? (more…)
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A remote sanctioning of infanticide learnt from the US playbook
The practice of remotely and vicariously bombing cities and civilians is a longstanding technique of war over which the Israelis certainly have no ownership. Secretary of State Blinken has been trying to call time out. But the US has been the modern day architect of this brutal and destructive weapon of war. (more…)
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Divide and fool: The Coalition’s misinformation campaign
In a recent Q and A, the opposition’s shadow minister for Climate Change and Energy Ted O’Brien’s improbable aim was to convince Australia that small nuclear reactors (SMRs) could replace our coal fired power plants and lead us to carbon neutrality. If you examine the economics of SMRs the proposition has to be classified as an absurdity with no chance of becoming a reality in the foreseeable future – if ever. (more…)
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Is ‘big oil’ the real problem?
While big oil is being trenchantly criticised for expanding oil and gas output it is acting in response to market forces. Much more attention therefore needs to be given to the failure of governments to end their subsidisation of oil companies, to ending the greenwashing of gas, and to redirecting investment to renewables. (more…)
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Our carbon colonialism
On his way to Beijing to repair bilateral climate change relations John Kerry announced to the world the US would ‘under no circumstances’ pay climate change ‘reparations’ to the developing world. Why such a statement? (more…)
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Are human rights abuses of the Chinese judicial system worse than that of the land of the free? A difficult call
Doing the rounds on YouTube is the case of a black American Tyshon Booker arrested when he was 16 for being present (with a gun) at a murder which he did not commit (the murderer confessed). He was given a 51 year minimum sentence. This case is, of course, is only the disgraceful tip of the human rights abuses embedded in the US’s state and federal judicial systems. Given the penchant for US officials to persistently raise human rights abuse with their Chinese counterparts what level of hypocrisy is involved here? (more…)
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The federal budget: what planet does Labour live on?
It’s astonishing now that the analytical dust has settled on the budget that out of 57 leading Australian economists, most have given it top marks. What planet we may ask do they – and the Labour Government – live on? Not one critically endangered by climate change and a catastrophic decline in biodiversity which collectively pose an unprecedented threat to our (not to mention the world’s) wellbeing and prosperity. (more…)
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Labor’s conflicted climate change policies
There is something but not much to celebrate over the safeguard compromise. It may well ensure we reduce our emissions by 43%. But the Labor government’s continued permissive attitude to new fossil fuel projects is in blatant disregard of the IPCC’s pathway to a 1.5C limit on global warming. (more…)
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Jim Chalmers’ new economics: a frontal assault on capitalism?
It’s no surprise that Jim Chalmers’ gentle challenge to neoliberal economics has generated an often rabid and intensely hostile response from the Murdoch media. To be hoped for is a more reasoned, informed national debate which focusses on, as Chalmers points to, fundamental changes to our economic environment. (more…)
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Will the Labor government take our catastrophic biodiversity decline seriously?
Now is not the time to assume Australia is back in the global forefront of environmental rectitude. Sadly, we are in the dark ages in terms of our record on biodiversity. (more…)
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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. (more…)
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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. (more…)
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An Australia-France entente cordiale?
Part of cleaning up Morrison’s AUKUS mess will be to find ways of using France’s more balanced relations with the US and China into a moderating role in the Asia-Pacific region. Albanese has just such an opportunity in his foreshadowed meeting with Macron. (more…)
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Stern and Stiglitz: The chaotic world of 2 degrees warming
Most of us will feel confident the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s clutch of recent reports has now delivered a globally dependable well researched path to carbon neutrality. After all its the product of thousands of the world’s scientific experts. (more…)
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The Coalition’s latest environmental fraud supported by Murdoch Media again. No surprise there!
If no one has noticed a central pillar of Australia’s risibly inadequate GHG reduction commitment of 26-28% by 2030 has recently been demolished by our own scientists. (more…)
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Britain’s Londongrad problem and investments in Australian mining companies
Sanctions imposed on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine highlights just how interrelated the global economy is and just how difficult they are to impose if the pain is not to be too much of a two way street. (more…)