While much of humanity was glued to the unfolding drama over one tiny submarine, the Earth we all inhabit is slowly, steadily and implacably imploding around us. (more…)
Category: Climate
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Environment: Two years left for a decent chance of keeping warming under 1.5ºC
Scientists establish annual dashboard of indicators of climate change to guide policymakers. Bushfires fatal for humans and invertebrates. Commercial sponsors sought for November’s COP meeting in Dubai. (more…)
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Requiem for our species
The effects of the climate crisis intrude with increasing regularity into our lives and yet we do not act. We are as paralysed as past civilisations were when facing catastrophic destruction. (more…)
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Environment: Do CO2 emissions influence your life expectancy?
Military activities generate uncounted but large amounts of greenhouse gas. Ocean temperatures hit all-time peak in April. Victoria to end logging of native forests. And, do your personal CO2 emissions influence your life expectancy? (more…)
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Environment: Who are the green groups pocketing dirty dollars?
Fossil fuel companies burnish their image with environmental sponsorships. Lakes and reservoirs drying up around the globe. China dominates the production of solar panels.
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The swarm: International consultancies
Predatory capitalism has become visible across the world as neo-liberalism becomes fully transnational. Consultancies working to authoritarian rules have consumed big business by making executives richer. They may be set to engulf governments and even entire societies. (more…)
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We love you gas, we do. Oh gas, we love you
Sycophantic ministers cosy up to the gas industry. Electricity from renewables will soon match increasing demand for electricity. Will sodium replace lithium in batteries?
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Spain runs entirely on green energy for 9 hours for first time, in harbinger of green future
Spain, the world’s 15th largest economy and the fourth-largest in Europe, recently ran for 9 hours entirely on wind, solar and hydro. It is not the first time the renewables supplied all of the country’s domestic electricity needs on the peninsula, but it is the first time they did so for so many hours in a row, on a weekday when demand is heavier than on the weekends, and when three of the country’s nuclear power plants were shut down for various reasons. So reports Ignacio Fariza at El Pais. (more…)
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SA’s populist punishment law to chill climate dissent
A new Bill to silence climate protest has provoked a broad chorus of alarm in South Australia. Despite opposition, it seems likely the Bill will pass and South Australia will join the ranks of governments determined to suppress opposition to the fossil fuel industry. (more…)
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Australia: The clever country?
In the 1980s, then Prime Minister Bob Hawke told us we should try to become the clever country. Instead, we have become the stupid country. We now have the trade pattern of a poor developing nation. It is obvious that the decade of Coalition government has moved us away from that goal, giving us instead a country that is less caring, less fair, less focussed on community and less able to respond to accelerating climate change. (more…)
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Environment: Developing a better relationship with Nature
Jurisdictions are increasingly introducing Rights of Nature provisions into their legal systems. International shipping needs to steer a better course to zero emissions. Rewilding Britain one stream at a time.
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Environment: Emissions, climate change and disasters got markedly worse in 2022
Greenhouse gas emissions continued to increase in 2022, as did the effects on Earth’s climate and the consequences for humans. Pet trading within Australia needs to be more strictly monitored and regulated. (more…)
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The budget and climate change: getting our priorities right
The Government’s treatment of climate change in the 2023 Budget is a vast improvement on their conservative predecessors. That said, it continues a pattern of reluctance to face reality on the really big issues which will determine our future as a nation, notably on climate. (more…)
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Environment: the real meaning of CCS: capitalism, corporations and subsidies
Carbon Capture and Storage, nothing but an inadequate fig leaf for obscene government endorsed corporate practices. Direct Air Capture may play a useful climate role in a few decades. Banks still lending trillions to fossil fuel companies.
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Are Australia’s climate–security risks too hot to handle?
The Australian government is keen to talk about defence, big submarines, China and national security. And renewable energy, big batteries, electric cars and big hydrogen. But put the two together — security and climate — and an odd thing happens. (more…)
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The USA and Australia fail on climate change
Nearly two years ago relief was expressed that the USA had emerged under President Biden to offer world leadership on climate change. Sadly this leadership has been a disappointment and today both the US and other high emitters such as Australia are not on track to meet the challenge. (more…)
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Environment: How good are we at capturing carbon?
Effective carbon capture is needed to stay under 2oC but need does not guarantee supply. A national park in Wales is regenerating culturally and ecologically. Helping you to know your cirrocumulus from your altostratus.
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Environment: climate change colonialism
Wealthy developed countries worsen the climate and debt crises of poor countries and trample on the rights of their Indigenous peoples.
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Environment: Rich people are melting Arctic sea ice
Rich countries and rich people have incredibly high greenhouse gas emissions. Arctic sea ice is shrinking. Tasmanian government plans to make fish farms more environmentally destructive.
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Environment: Energy transition’s progress is AC. Needs to be DC
China leads the world in building both coal and renewable infrastructure. Ten leading drivers of climate action are ineffective at keeping warming below 2oC. More and more species exposed to extinction as temperatures rise.
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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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The government has a duty to be transparent about all security risks
The overblown rhetoric on imminent war with China has been justified as the need for the Australian people to be fully informed of threats to the nation. But the same rationale has not been applied to the security threat of climate change, a far greater risk the response to which will be far more costly and extensive. (more…)
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Environment: Climate change, chickens or cats: choose our poison
Climate change is causing more flash floods in dry areas and increasing methane emissions from wetlands. Cats continue to destroy Australian wildlife. Chicken and salmon farming pollute their local environments.
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Environment: Rapidly closing window of opportunity to achieve a safe, sustainable future
New IPCC report documents a threatening climate-present and a bleak climate-future. Alcoa failing to rehabilitate the lands it has destroyed once mining stops. Shortage of integrity not gas behind our gas problems.
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Environment: Trees good. Plastics bad. Why don’t governments turn it around?
Trees are good for the climate and human health. Plastics are bad for the environment and bird health. Where are the good governments when you need them?
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Environment: Labor safeguards our fossil fuel climate wreckers
Australia’s Safeguard Mechanism gets a government greenwash while international efforts to control Scope 3 emissions increase. Pygmy chameleons and eagle-owls are fighting for survival in different ways. Please stop eating shark and Tassie farmed salmon.
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A desperate race to avoid locking in the pathway to human extinction
We are in a desperate race to avoid locking in a pathway to human extinction. This requires brutal honesty on the threats we face. Climate change, not China, Russia or the US, is the greatest threat the world faces; it will only be overcome with unprecedented global co-operation.
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Environment: does bad news about the environment create doom loops?
We are losing trees and insects at alarming rates and Australia’s land and sea temperatures continue to rise. But does too much bad news create ‘Doom Loops’?
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Environment: humans must care for our travelling companions: earth’s animals, plants and ecosystems
Indigenous owned forests in the Amazon absorb carbon; non-Indigenous forests produce carbon. Chicken and pig factories are bad for the animals and bad for the climate. (more…)
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Preventing civilisation collapse: Australia should lead the way
Can we avoid, what a growing number of researchers and writers, consider, will be the likely collapse of human civilisation in the not-too-distant future, if we do not quickly and radically change direction? (more…)