Humanity is facing a compounding crisis driven by population growth, consumption, pollution and power. These interconnected threats cannot be addressed one by one if civilisation is to endure. (more…)
Category: The Human Future
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Climate hot takes for 2025
Scientific evidence in 2025 showed global warming accelerating faster than expected, while emissions continued to rise and climate policy lagged dangerously behind physical reality. (more…)
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The long consequences of forgetting
As climate breakdown, war and institutional failure converge, the comforts of forgetting no longer shield us from the consequences of our own history.
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Stealing the breath of life
When you suffocate or drown, every fibre of your being cries out for the breath of life, oxygen. It is the body’s ungovernable response to the extinguishing of your flame. (more…)
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The black work of big oil
Now is the sinister time of year when the Barons of Big Oil gather together, under the auspices of the United Nations and with the blessing of most world leaders, to celebrate the 350 million needless deaths they plan to cause between now and 2050 in the name of profit. (more…)
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Death by plastic
“Mummy…Daddy, what are clouds made of?” Almost every parent has fielded the innocent, eager question, perhaps explaining about mist, fog, water vapour, raindrops. Today, if you said that, you’d be wrong. (more…)
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Tipping, tipping, tipping… the dominoes fall
Dying reefs, shrinking icesheets, withering forests and collapsing currents are the latest symptoms of an Earth system enduring dangerous trauma, according to the Global Tipping Points Report 2025. (more…)
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Climate change causing oceans to decline at alarming rate
Climate change and human activity are causing the health of the world’s oceans to decline at an alarming rate, the UN has warned. (more…)
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The Earth uncloaked – A catastrophe in slow motion
Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I’ll protect it now. – GP Morris 1837 (more…)
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World water in crisis
Almost two-thirds of the world’s rivers are in a dire condition, either drying up or supercharged with floodwaters, according to the latest report on the emerging global water crisis by the World Meteorological Organisation. (more…)
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‘Died of a delusion’ – the fate of modern civilisation?
The collapse of modern human civilisation is inevitable. Anyone who doesn’t accept that knows no history. (more…)
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Devouring the earth may decide our future
Every day, the food you eat and resources you use cost the planet at least 12 kilos of lost topsoil. (more…)
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Australia issues ‘terrifying’ climate warning
More intense global warming will bring “terrifying impacts” to human health, infrastructure, the environment, national security and the economy, the Australian Government has warned. (more…)
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Can we save a ‘livable Earth’?
In reshaping the world for prosperity, humanity has undermined the very foundations of progress. (more…)
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Military experts warn of climate wars
“Accelerating climate disruption is the greatest threat to the human future: our safety and well-being, our homes and communities, and how and where we live and work,” a group of leading Australian military and security experts says. (more…)
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Where have all the flowers gone?
One of my most memorable interspecies encounters was many years ago with an orangutan in a nature reserve in Sabah on the island of Borneo. (more…)
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The Earth is under chemical attack
The largest of the 10 catastrophic threats now facing humanity is global poisoning, yet it receives less attention from science, government and society than all the others. (more…)
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The great dying
The heedless march of man has now laid waste to 60% of the planet’s land surface area, putting humanity’s own future at risk, the latest science reports. (more…)
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Environment: Humanity’s big success: turning forests from saviours to spoilers
We’re destroying the ability of forests to mitigate global warming. Extreme weather events cause food price hikes and social unrest. Airlines are ignoring sustainable aviation fuel, but does it matter? (more…)
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The great waste
Each person on the planet now uses an average of 12 tonnes of materials a year. The problem is, Earth can only renew about seven tonnes of that prodigious consumption in a 12-month period. (more…)
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The end of jobs?
By the 2040s, half to three-quarters of human society may be out of work, replaced by AI and sleepless robots. (more…)
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When technology enslaves humans
The future of humanity will no longer be determined by humans – that much is already clear. Technology has taken charge of our destiny. The question is: can anything be done? (more…)
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Humanity is ‘risking catastrophe’: UN
The full spread of the impending crisis facing humanity is, at long last, emerging into daylight with the publication by the United Nations of its 2025 Global Risks Report. (more…)
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Why the world needs renewable food
The future well-being and survival of civilisation rests upon a single, fragile assumption: that there will always be enough food. (more…)
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A distracted world marches steadily towards catastrophe
As the nations bicker, squabble and fight among themselves, their ultimate disintegration becomes more certain and more imminent with each passing day. (more…)
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Go-ahead for new carbon bomb marks Australia as enemy of the region
In planning its future release of up to 80 billion tonnes of planet-heating carbon, Australia has committed itself to the destruction of nations and wrecking of big cities throughout the Indo-Pacific Region. (more…)
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Australia’s latest emissions data shows a giant fossil fuel problem
Without accounting for land use, Australia’s emissions have only decreased 3% since 2005, not 27%.
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The threat to survival of our human species is now desperately serious
It is now, nearly three years, since I published an opinion piece in a number of Australian newspapers, entitled; “Human Extinction isn’t Inevitable, Yet…” (more…)
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Merchants of death
In extending the life of Australia’s North West Shelf gas project till 2070, the federal and WA Governments have knowingly signed the death warrants of four million human beings. (more…)
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Environment: Australians must defend our right to protest
Dissent and protest are under attack across Australia. Thawing permafrost is a problem for everyone, not just Arctic-dwellers. LNG produces more emissions than coal, oil or gaseous natural gas. Renewables rollouts are up, but so are energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. (more…)