The world’s biodiversity will continue to deteriorate even if temperature rise was arrested. The question for the Glasgow summit is whether our emission-driving economic system can respond.
Category: Climate
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Barnaby Joyce fills Scott Morrison’s climate policy vacuum
The responsibility for Australia’s climate and energy policies have effectively been handed over to a group of Nationals MPs. It’s a travesty, but it shouldn’t be a surprise.
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National Party is extorting the government for money and favours on climate change
After all the grandstanding, the National Party will make a deal on climate change policy. They are for sale.
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Zero chance of net zero: the human security challenge after 2050
We are condemned to a hot planet. A 4-degree warming is inevitable no matter what measures are taken, so humans must now consider how to cope with this reality.
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Sunday environmental round up.
Climate change creates internal refugees for countries least able to cope. Urgent action required to reduce methane emissions – but it’s easy. Australian companies’ carbon offsetting schemes are corporate greenwashing and nations’ emission reduction promises are just that … promises.
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Raise Warragamba dam, raise the risk to the environment
More housing, less habitat. More extinctions, less vegetation. With the raising of Australia’s largest urban water supply dam, Sydney would be further primed to emulate the flood disasters of Brisbane. (more…)
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Scott Morrison shames Australia with abdication to the National Party
Scott Morrison has abdicated any pretence of leadership on climate change, allowing the National Party — which has turned its back on farmers — to hold Australia to ransom.
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News Corp’s climate pivot perpetrates a new fraud and draws us closer to climate catastrophe
Not only does News Corp’s new climate change campaign come after years of spreading climate misinformation, it is also simply replacing its last fraud with another.
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Waking up to the Coalition’s climate change dinosaurs
While the press debates whether the prime minister will go to COP26, members of his government are living in a world where they believe their constituents aren’t worried about climate change.
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After the battle for net zero emissions, more climate battles are coming
The battle for net zero emissions is nearly over, but not the war. A new battle, to cut emissions deeply by 2030, is under way. Following hard behind, another battle is starting, to cut emissions of methane.
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With a five per cent vote the Nationals are holding us to ransom on climate change
What is the meaning of Australian democracy when a minor party, populated by extreme right-wing ideologists, can decide Australia’s position on arguably the most important policy issue of our time — climate change?
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The unrecognised challenge on the left of successfully addressing global warming
Despite the focus on events like COP26 to put pressure on governments, the critical point of leverage in the political domain to adopt the policies needed for a new era will remain at the national level.
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Sunday environmental round up
Thirty per cent of tree species are at risk of extinction, an issue of vital importance to city dwellers. Disasters are linked and compound each other and share human-induced root causes. Summer night-time temperatures rising. Angus Taylor touting ‘positive energy’.
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John Brown: We owe our young people action on climate change
What a pity that beautiful, talented sensitive young Aussies are hamstrung by a government which is condemned around the world for its failure to act on improving the world’s environment.
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Before it even starts in Glasgow, COP26 is a climate change success
Momentum is building for the big climate conference in Glasgow next month. It needs a big contribution from China. This may not happen: their agenda is full. But Glasgow has succeeded already.
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Sunday environmental round up.
The rate of global warming set to double as fossil fuel use falls. Australia’s climate negligence threatening security. Children born today will be exposed to more extreme weather events. Patchwork deforestation creates more forest edges.
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When a forest becomes a means of destruction: The Jewish National Fund, Greenwashing and COP26
In 1901, in Basel, Switzerland, a small group of Jewish men established an organisation which they named, portentously, the Jewish National Fund (JNF).
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Australia must be more ambitious on climate, or the negative impacts will multiply
The challenge of decarbonising the economy is of equal magnitude to Australia’s submarine deal, and requires an equivalent bold response.
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The Australian dilemma: a gas-led recovery, stranded assets and carbon neutrality
If Australia’s coal and gas industry continues to expand production, it faces the prospect of an eyewatering accumulation of stranded carbon assets when Australia formally adopts a policy of net zero emissions by 2050.
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Rupert Murdoch’s snail-like journey on climate change
The situation is so bad that even Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp empire has read the commercial tea leaves on climate change and rolled over. Not surprisingly Scott Morrison now also shows signs of a belated change of heart. (more…)
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Sunday environmental round up
The pressure rises before the Glasgow COP meeting. The end of coal may be on the distant horizon but 80 per cent of the world’s energy still comes from fossil fuels and corporate America is preparing to fight Biden’s climate action plans.
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Sunday environmental round up.
China could close all its coal-fired power stations by 2045. North Atlantic right whales facing climate change threats quicker than humans are moving to protect them. More than 200 environmental activists murdered in 2020.
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The Norwegian election was fought and won on climate policy. Are there lessons for Australia?
Despite its lowest polling in 20 years, the Norwegian Labour Party will form a coalition government after a campaign largely focussed on the environment and renewable energy. Is this a sign of things to come for our federal election? (more…)
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Beyond the hype of hydrogen
In the last three years, hydrogen has become all the rage. For those following energy and climate, barely a day goes by without a new story about hydrogen. But is hydrogen essential to our efforts to decarbonise the global energy system?
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If the PM is serious about reducing gas prices, he needs to address price fixing
The government should explain to taxpayers just how its gas policy will make energy more affordable and how employment will be created.
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Sunday environmental round up.
Small farmers and local, sustainable food production more likely to feed the world than multinational corporations supported by government subsidies. Health professionals come out fighting on climate change and Biden hears the roar. 2020 and the planet is in its worst shape ever.
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Climate change and politics as usual: A government missing in action
Successive governments’ failure to act on climate change means it is now the greatest threat to Australian and global human security.
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The climate apocalypse: Can a collapse of global civilisation be avoided?
If OECD countries don’t phase out existing coal by 2030, they will be facilitating global collapse.
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Local residents fight for critical birdlife habitat on the Great Ocean Road
Ten to 20 million years ago, the Southern Ocean and its ferocious winds sculpted the iconic limestone cliffs and caves that frame the rugged beauty of Victoria’s Great Ocean Road.
