Category: Climate

The effects of encroaching deserts and of fire storms on terrestrial forests, originally developed under moderate conditions distinct from those emerging under rapid global warming and extreme weather events, may have been underestimated. Average global temperatures do not tell the story — it is the increasingly frequent weather anomalies which do. Powerful psychological factors prevent many scientists from expressing their worst fears, a phenomenon dubbed as “scientific reticence”. 

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The Canberra bushfire of January 2003 burnt, in an afternoon, nearly three times as many houses as have been consumed in NSW in this terrible week of 2019 as fires have raged in north-eastern NSW.

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We don’t need name calling. But we do need to talk about climate change and bushfires. (more…)

As sure as night follows day, this week’s bushfires prompted inevitable debate about whether fire authorities should have carried out more hazard reduction burning, and whether opposition from conservationists prevented this. (more…)

The eyes of the energy world are upon it, but the renewable energy transition in South Australia is probably one of the misunderstood, misreported and under-appreciated achievements of our time. (more…)

“How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just ‘business as usual’ and some technical solutions? …You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.We will not let you get away with this.” These were the words of sixteen-year old Swedish schoolgirl, Greta Thunberg as she addressed the United Nations climate conference on 25th September this year. (more…)

Homo sapiens suffers from a cognitive defect in that we have evolved to deal with immediate and concrete threats, but not ones that happen to us slowly over time, like climate change. Those with Asperger’s syndrome see the world differently, and it is interesting to think that the rest of us might have to learn something from people disabled and often mocked. (more…)

Our Government maintains the primacy of the economy in all its deliberations. Even when mental health gets attention through the Productivity Commission it is with a view to “improving mental health to support economic participation and enhancing productivity and economic growth,” rather than with the primary purpose of alleviating suffering. (more…)

Four years ago in December 2015, every member of the United Nations met in Paris and agreed to hold global temperature increases to 2°C, and as close as possible to 1.5°C. The bad news is that four years on the best we can hope for is holding global increases to about 1.75°C. We can only do that if the world moves decisively towards zero net emissions by the middle of the century. (more…)

The Australian parliament voted against it.

But now 11,000 people who might know one or two more facts than a bubble of politicians have confirmed it is, indeed, happening: the whole world is in the midst of a climate emergency. (more…)

Despite promises to cut emissions, Australia’s emissions are still rising. But at the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month, prime minister Scott Morrison rejected criticism by claiming that “Australia now has the highest per capita investment in clean energy technologies of anywhere in the world”. (more…)

In 1997, oceanographer and boat captain Charles Moore made a shocking discovery. After deciding to cut through the North Pacific Gyre on his way back to California from Hawaii, Moore gazed into the ocean and, instead of pristine waters, found a vast vortex of floating plastic debris.

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While local drought-affected communities are declaring a climate emergency, present proposals to mitigate the impacts of drought fail to address the real crisis. They do not recognise that this drought is not just another variation on ‘normal’ conditions, but a step towards a new climate. More radical and comprehensive planning and action are required. (more…)

Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg has changed the conversation about global heating. Her passionate concern and emphasis on its likely impact on people her age has stirred public concern in a fresh way. How dare we, she asks of us older generations, respond with complacency, arrogance and inertia to such a threat? Wisdom, concern, and attention to the science can enable us to respond much better. (more…)

It is said that little is certain in life except death and taxes. In contemporary Australian public policy debate we can add another inevitability: that during terrible droughts governments will spend large amounts of taxpayer resources to address farmers’ legitimate anxieties concerning the effects. (more…)

The current Coalition response to just another drought is pathetic,short term, divisive and dishonest. All it is doing is managing the drought politically. (more…)

In a country as dry as Australia, surely it is a no-brainer that we have in place a coordinated, national drought response that can be rolled out the same way that the Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements are triggered when the country experiences cyclones, floods or bushfires. (more…)

In Australia, the only thing as certain as drought is the subsequent calls by politicians to build new dams.

Right on cue, the prime minister announced a $1bn commitment for new dams on Sunday. (more…)