Father Christmas lives many lives, Because he’s a master of disguise.

You may have met him on a train, Or seeking shelter from the rain.

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These catastrophic times call for different responses to the festive season. Mine is below. The community reaction in our part of the Southern Highlands (as yet untouched by fire) has been heartening. Donations are flowing, people are looking out for each other, and even grey-haired respectably clad ladies are openly railing about the lack of national leadership. (more…)

The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences farmpredict model finds that changes in climate conditions since 2000 have cut farm profits by 22% overall, and by 35% for cropping farms. (more…)

Pressure to be seen to be doing something immediately about results of bad policy. (more…)

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Whatever the cause of our changing climate – natural variation or human-made – we should invest in adaptation. (more…)

How good is Australia’s climate leadership?

In short, appalling, as the recent disputes on the linkage between climate change, drought, water availability and bushfires confirm only too well.   (more…)

The Real Climate Challenge

After three decades of inaction, human-induced climate change is the greatest threat, and opportunity, facing this country, far outweighing the issues dominating our domestic political discourse, such as the US/China impasse, a faltering economy and religious freedom.  The world faces the same threat. (more…)

Myopia, loss aversion and free-rider problems undermine the provision of public goods, including global public goods like climate change mitigation.  It’s easy to understand why climate policy has been a failure in Australia.    But what happens when the central case of long-term projections, something outside of the bounds of what has been considered probable in the near-term, comes crashing into the present?  That’s what our politicians were dealing with through 2006, following several years of drought.  Eventually, entrenched positions were abandoned.  Could we see this happen again? (more…)

As homes and communities go up in flames, Australian politics descends into new depths of silly-season absurdity. Enough is enough. It is time for Australia’s leaders to face up to the nation’s greatest security threat. (more…)

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After more than a year of grim scientific projections and growing activism, world leaders and the public alike are increasingly recognizing the severity and urgency of the climate crisis. And yet nothing has been done.

Recently I was talking to a political insider in Canberra who told me he’d heard on numerous occasions at dinner parties that tragically the Great Barrier Reef is dead. (more…)

In 2018, the IPCC warned with high confidence that ‘Global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if [the rate of emissions] continues to increase at the current rate’. The World Meteorological Organisation reported this week that in 2018 emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide had equalled or surpassed emissions in the previous year. We’re screwed! (more…)

Since its inception the Paris climate accord has been in question due, among other factors, to (1) its broad definition, intended to keep mean global temperature rise this century to below +2^oC above the pre-industrial level and efforts to limit the temperature increase to below +1.5^oC above the pre-industrial level; (2) its non-binding nature, and (3) accounting tricks by vested interests. The goal assumes pre-determined upper limits can be placed on greenhouse gas levels and surface temperatures.

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Last month the Earth got its first day in court in cases against ExxonMobil lodged in New York and Massachusetts in which it was alleged, among other things, that the company misled the public about its product. (more…)

It is really the LNP government over the last six years that should have been making the run on climate change mitigation, but it has done nothing apart from giving handouts-Direct Action–to certain favoured recipients. Any efforts it might have made on climate change mitigation were completely derailed by Tony Abbott when he became prime minister and his extreme denialist attitude continues to the present day. (more…)

Of all the horrors that might befall the burnt out, the flooded, the cyclone ravaged and the drought stricken Australian this summer, perhaps none could be viewed with more dread than turning from their devastated home to see advancing on them a bubble of media in which enwombed is our prime minister, Scott Morrison, arriving, as ever, too late with a cuddle. (more…)

Arguably the ALP since its election loss in 2013 has not been able to legislate for climate change mitigation though it was able to make some contribution when the National Energy Guarantee was proposed in 2017–only to be defeated by the right of the LNP. However, It had played a significant role in its genesis, in part because it was a COAG development involving some state Labor energy ministers. When it was in office from 2007-2013 its efforts in developing a carbon tax gave us a taste of what might have been. (more…)

Given the centrality of the problem of an emerging climate catastrophe in the consciousness of many Australians now, it is timely to canvas the progress of the two main parties in conceptualizing and dealing with climate change. Not just because of what they might or might not have done in the past, but because of what their activity or inactivity portends for the future. (more…)

Recent fires in Australia and California have provoked discussion about the effects of climate change. These extreme events, not unknown in times past, seem to be more frequent now and suggest that the recorded changes in global temperature may be responsible. Blame – a common feature that follows disasters – is variously ascribed to political inertia over fossil fuels or local failure to take evasive preparative action as through preventive hazard reduction. Political polarisation has followed. We need a good dose of cooling off before developing effective stronger coping strategies. (more…)