Environment

Three years ago this week, Australia was burning. On 7 February 2009 — now known as Black Saturday — a massive firestorm consumed more than 400,000 hectares in southern Australia. At least 173 people died trying to outrun the fires, defend their homes or seek shelter.

That blaze was unusually fierce, but fires are a constant source of anxiety for Australia. The continent is extremely fire-prone, with a distinctive signature of oscillating fire activity that begins in the north during the winter, then moves south during the summer. Lately, the fires have been more intense and widespread, perhaps as a result of climate change — last year, around 5 per cent of the continent was burnt.

If only fires were Australia’s sole environmental concern. The continent is also overrun by invasive species. They fill holes created by a mass extinction event that occurred around 50,000 years ago during the Pleistocene, when the arrival of the first Australians coincided with a collapse in the continent’s megafauna, namely giant marsupials (some as large as hippopotamuses), reptiles and birds.

Continue reading "Could elephants save the Australian environment?" »

There was movement at the station for the word had got around that the Feds might have finally gotten something right for a change.

Late yesterday, news filtered through that Tony Burke, Minister for Sustainability, Environment and a bunch of other stuff, had put the kybosh on Victorian premier Ted Baillieu’s absurd, cynical and dangerous plan to reintroduce grazing to the High Country. Good.

Minister Burke rejected a proposal by the Victorian government to allow cattle into the Alpine National Park for five months a year, arguing it was in breach of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. He’s right, too. Parks Victoria is just one reputable body which has produced scientific evidence showing that grazing is detrimental to the High Country.

Continue reading "ALP saves the Alps" »

In the iconic Kimberley region of West Australia one of Australia’s biggest recent environmental battlegrounds has emerged in the red cliffs and turquoise waters of James Price Point, about 20 km north of Broome. This is a battle that might ultimately be won in the investor board rooms rather than on the front lines of blockades.

The Browse Basin gas hub development has stoked up so much opposition on so many fronts that many investors are now asking if the project is still economically viable, or if in fact Woodside’s ‘social licence’ to proceed has disappeared in the red dust that graces the Kimberley coastline.

Australian business is all too familiar with the impact strident community opposition can have on controversial major projects, yet some large corporations and investors continue to discount the importance of maintaining their social licence and protecting the environment.

Continue reading "Has Woodside hit its price point on the environment?" »

I once tried to explain cricket to a Spaniard. After half an hour of Pictionary-grade diagrams, an English-Spanish dictionary and rubbing my groin with a Granny Smith, all that Fernando had grasped with any certainty was that he didn’t wish to eat the apple.

I have lived in some peculiar places and enjoyed some peculiar conversations, but I had to venture to Cairns to have a discussion with a woman about how best to post an ant through the mail. And not any type of ant but an Electric ant, or a suspected Electric ant, hence the conversation.

I grew up on Sydney’s forested North Shore, so I’m accustomed to creepy crawlies in the house and have liberated many a spider in the brave space between a cup and a postcard. Postcards were invented for such endeavours. Now that people have stopped sending them, my house resembles the set of Arachnophobia. 

Continue reading "Pfft to your fancy European power, we have electric ants" »

Every time NZ Prime Minister John Key’s phone rings, he must fear the worst. Every time your average Kiwi switches on the news, they must dread what they’re about to hear.

Our tiny neighbour across the Tasman experienced disaster after disaster in 2011.

Unfortunately, the first week of 2012 brought events that jogged painful memories of the events of the previous year - and another tragedy of its own.

Continue reading "Leave this beautiful little country alone!" »

Update - 9.15am Tuesday, January 10: It’s being reported the Australian Government will dispatch the Customs vessel Ocean Protector to collect the three activists, after Japanese authorities agreed to hand them back without charge.

Three men board a foreign ship in the dead of night, outside Australian waters, without permission. The crew of the target ship refuses their demands, and sets course for the ocean blue. And now it’s our Attorney-General’s job to fix it.

According to the A-G Nicola Roxon, all options are on the table at present, including sending a vessel out to meet the Shonan Maru No.2 and collect WA men Glen Pendlebury, Geoffrey Tuxworth and Simon Peterffy. She’s even been asked if the Navy should be mobilised.

This in spite of the bleeding obvious, that Roxon pointed out: “We do need to explain to the public that although we do not support Japanese whaling, if people take action outside our territorial waters, Australian laws will not automatically apply and that does restrict some of the options that the Government can take.”

Continue reading "Are these men our problem?" »

History is littered with good intentions gone bad and concerns are growing the Government’s recently released draft Murray Darling Basin Plan is a prime example.

Frontline environmentalists, who live and work with the vagaries of the rivers, are warning that the Government is heading down the wrong track and could be responsible for allowing wetlands, which not even the worst drought in living memory could kill, to be severely damaged as a result of over-watering.

If we have above average rainfall over the next 12 months the world’s largest river red gum forest is facing the very real prospect of being degraded within three years of it being declared a national park, and two years before the Federal Government has signed off on an environmental watering plan.

Continue reading "Water, water, everywhere and all the trees will shrink" »

Climate change sceptics shouldn’t have to resort to juvenile ‘Gotcha’ tactics to get attention. But Professor Ian Plimer just did. And his target? Schoolteachers. Nice.

Prime Minister John Howard aided and abetted him, speaking at the launch of Plimer’s new book, How to Get Expelled from School: A Guide to Climate Change for Pupils, Parents and Punters.

The first bit of devious trickery is evident in the title - the ludicrous implication that a student would get kicked out of school for asking questions is just a nod to the conspiracy theorists who think the world’s scientists are engaged in an enormous scam.

Continue reading "How Plimer’s climate change book might just work" »

Here’s a simple thought experiment: imagine a glass seemingly empty apart from a scum on the bottom. That scum is yeast that doubles its size every day and you know that, after 60 days, the glass will be full to the brim with that yeasty scum. Question: on which day is the glass half full?

Answer: day 59. Just one day before the glass is filled to capacity it’s half full. That’s the sneaky thing about exponential growth.The final spurt happens so rapidly.

Take the world’s human population. We only made it to the first one billion people within the last 300 years. But then we really started packing them in. When I was born in 1963 there were 3.5 billion people. Now, just 47 years later, we’re double that figure and still climbing rapidly.

Continue reading "How many people can the world support?" »

Many of us learnt at school that the great Nile River sustained Egypt through floods that nourished the fertility of the river’s floodplain.

Our Murray and Darling Rivers are no different.

It’s in Australia’s national interest to protect and restore the Murray Darling Basin. Disconnect the river from the floodplain and you destroy the fertility of the land.

Continue reading "Watering down the Murray Darling plan would be fatal" »

In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama outlined his vision for an America powered by clean energy, traveling by High Speed Rail, and competing in global clean technology markets. Obama set out a clear principle: “[I]nstead of subsidising yesterday’s energy,” he implored, “let’s invest in tomorrow’s.”

Excellent idea Mr. President.

By choosing the future, not the past, President Obama has opened a fierce technology competition with China and Germany, to bring the cost of renewable energy down below gas, coal and nuclear.

Continue reading "Only fossils want to rely on old-school fuel" »

Here’s the real problem with the climate change debate. It’s not that the deniers have hijacked the overwhelming scientific consensus, sneakily turning a huge body of evidence into what many now perceive to be a 50/50 proposition.

Neither is the problem the fact that the carbon tax will bankrupt us (which it won’t) or that Bob Brown has become our de facto prime minister (which he hasn’t) or that we’re pissing some perfectly good industries down the drain in the search for new clean jobs (which we aren’t).

The problem with the climate change debate is that this whole endless shouting match is supposedly about saving the environment, yet no one is actually talking about the environment.

Continue reading "Climate change debate is the enemy of environmentalism" »

We’re entering a new phase of the carbon pricing ‘debate’ this week, because it’s now too late for anyone to do much about it, despite Opposition Leader Tony Abbott promising there will be no carbon tax under a Government which he leads.

The Gillard Government has pinned its hopes on the electorate absorbing the costs of the tax – and the compensation for the tax – and realising that things, relatively speaking, are not going to tip over into some fetid abyss of poverty from which there is no return.

What they’re overlooking in their optimism, though, is how deep the distrust of the Government now runs, and how firmly embedded the notion of the Prime Minister as a liar is.

Continue reading "ICB: Are Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s pants really on fire?" »

The Opposition will keep fighting the carbon pricing scheme because there isn’t a lot else of similar weight which would recommend a vote for Tony Abbott’s troops at the next election.

And it’s easier than coming up with functional policies Mr Abbott could call his own.

The Nationals’ Barnaby Joyce joined the chorus of outrage after the passage of the Clean Energy Future bills: “It is not a defeat; it’s an adjournment.”

Continue reading "Abbott will keep flogging the carbon horse, of course" »

Two years after Kevin Rudd’s carbon pollution reduction scheme crashed in Parliament, Julia Gillard is poised to achieve what he could not: a fixed price on carbon leading to a full emissions trading scheme from 2015.

Debate in the Senate will be “guillotined” later today to bring on a vote on the bills thereby concluding the crucial legislative phase of what has become the most divisive political argument in decades.

The 19 bill package setting a $23-a-tonne price rising by 5 per cent for the following two years is expected to pass on a combination of Greens and Labor votes.

Continue reading "Gillard’s carbon victory more toxic than sweet" »

Roma, some 600km west of Brisbane, used to be a country town where you could drive your car onto the airport tarmac to pick up friends arriving on the few flights servicing the place.

It had a small motel many years ago when I lived there but most travellers stayed at pubs with names such as The School of Arts.

The population back all those decades ago when sheep and cattle ruled was nudging 5000. Compared to some of the neighbouring towns such as Injune and Wallumbilla, it was a big place.

Continue reading "Coal seam gas a blast of hope for rural communities" »

Last week The Punch published this piece which is critical of Federal MP Bob Katter and his financial backers, who had been photographed posing with ‘extinct in the wild’ and exotic animals, including a giraffe. This is a response to that article.

My name is Keith Drain, I am a hunter and shooter, I run www.huntandshoot.com.au, a hunting and shooting news website. I am 27 years old, I have a beautiful wife and I work as a manager at a cinema. If you met me you’d think I was a regular guy - that’s because I am.

Like many others, I was introduced to shooting and fishing by my Dad. Hunting to me is an enjoyable and rewarding pastime. I get to go out and do what I love doing, I get to provide meat for my family and my dogs and I get to help the environment by ridding the land of feral and introduced species, which to me is very important.  I have no shame in owning firearms or hunting.

Continue reading "Hunting and killing exotic animals can help save them" »

The United Nations estimates that the world’s population will reach seven billion sometime in late October or early November. The sixth billion was arrived at in 1999, and it is significant that the seventh billion took the same number of years (12) to add as the sixth.

This is relevant because prior to that, there had been a progressive shortening of the time taken to add billions to the human population. The first billion was reached in 1804, taking many thousands of years of human evolution to achieve. Thereafter successive billions were added in 123, 32, 15 and 13 years respectively.

This reflects a slowing down in global population growth from a high of 2.1 per cent per annum in the late 1960s to 1.2 percent per annum currently.

Continue reading "Seven billion reasons to think about sustainability…" »

Quint would be pleased. The professional shark-hunter from Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws would raise a glass and toast the WA government’s decision to authorise the destruction of the shark responsible for a diver’s death at Rottnest Island last week.

And just like in Jaws, there’s community hysteria, a loss of reasoned thought, at the idea there is a man-eater waiting in the shallows off the coast.

This reaction is admirable and understandable. The loss of a life through misadventure is tragic. Often the casualty is in their prime and their loved ones are always devastated. Our unreserved sympathies go out to those left behind in what must be the worst imaginable circumstances. No act or sentiment can ever fill the hole left in their lives.

Continue reading "The myth of the “man-eater” is a great white lie" »

Those too selfish and lazy to properly stash their trash better listen up. It’s time to take a leaf out of Singapore’s book and treat litterers like the criminals they are.

I was a race virgin until recently. Sydney’s Rosehill Gardens is, as expected, an eclectic mix of beautiful and hideous dresses, faceless men with mobiles plastered to their ears on the balcony, hardcore punters in trackie dacks casting a hex on their rivals by invoking Tony Abbott’s name. It was like Parliament, really, with a touch of sunshine and horses.

But somewhere between struggling to walk back and forth from the racing track to the bookies on uneven ground in stilettos, something did surprise me. Betting tickets, plastic drinking cups, hotdog buckets, and loose change everywhere.

Continue reading "For god’s sake, bin your damn rubbish" »

When I think of regional Australia, I think of long drives, lots of wildlife and lights in the sky not on the ground. There is another thing that now distinguishes regional Australia: an absolute rejection of the carbon tax.

Senator John Williams recently conducted a poll in the seats of New England (based around Tamworth) and Lyne (based around Port Macquarie). After receiving over 9,400 responses, 89 per cent of residents are against the carbon tax.

The reason for this is not that hard to fathom. When it comes to the carbon tax, the greater the distance, the greater the cost.

Continue reading "An unaffordable tax beyond all regional doubt" »

And you can be sure the shouting’s not over yet. Before the carbon tax begins on July 1, 2012, we may even see blood shed if Opposition Leader Tony Abbott goes through with his pledge. But the tax now just has to be rubber stamped by the Senate.

There were some histrionics on the floor of Parliament with the Liberal’s Sophie Mirabella being thrown out (we wonder which way she was planning to vote?) and THAT so-called “Judas kiss”.

The very vocal opposition to the carbon price will not settle into acquiescent bitterness, so this won’t be the last you hear of it. For now, here’s what was said on the inarguably historic day in Australian Parliament.

Continue reading "Carbon tax reax: It’s all over bar the shouting" »

The tiny nation of Tuvalu is facing a crisis. A number of the islands including the capital Funafuti are suffering acute water shortages. On the island of Nukulaelae it is estimated that without intervention the water supplies would have run out by week’s end.

Australia and New Zealand are immediately responding by shipping in temporary desalination plants and fresh water supplies and helping repair existing desalination units. Water tanks, the great bulk of which have been supplied through Australian aid, are part of the longer term solution.

Yet water tanks are only of use if it rains. And here, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Tuvalu is experiencing a drought.

Continue reading "Climate change poses a Pacific problem" »

The toxic oil spill in the Bay of Plenty will leave tonnes of dirty, sticky fuel on New Zealand beaches.

The clean up will continue today, even as “fist-sized patties about 5mm high” continue to wash up, with the weather hampering efforts to battle the spill from the crashed cargo ship Rena. It’s a looming environmental disaster.

Authorities can’t use booms to stop the spread because of the ocean conditions, and are hoping dispersants will reduce the damage. There is also some speculation marine microbes could help.

Continue reading "A quick Punch guide to the Rena oil spill" »

A number of times in each federal Parliament, the elected representatives of the people face important tests of their values, ideas and policy credentials. This week will see one of these tests when the House of Representatives votes on the Gillard Government’s clean energy future legislation.

MPs will be asked whether they want to respond to scientific advice and take action to leave a cleaner environment for future generations or whether they prefer to ignore the advice of scientists and squander the opportunity to tackle climate change.

They face a choice between a market-based reform and the discredited nostrums of subsidies and politicians picking winners.

Continue reading "Punch: it’s about jobs and clean energy, not a tax slug" »

Australians want to help improve the world in which they live. Most would therefore rightly assume that if they pay a Carbon Tax this will at least clean up emissions in Australia.

Certainly this is the impression given by the Government’s Carbon Tax ad campaign and from the debate as the Parliament this week votes on the legislation. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Australia’s emissions will go up, not down, under the Carbon Tax. And on top of the $105 billion the tax is to raise between now and 2020, Treasury’s own modelling shows that we will also have to spend an additional $3.5bn each year on foreign carbon credits.

Continue reading "Counterpunch: we need real incentives, not another tax" »

It’s official. The water quality in Gladstone Harbour is fine despite one of the world’s biggest dredging programs. Sick fish are getting better, there are no health problems and the three week fishing ban over 500 sqkm of waterways has just been lifted.

Apparently more than 20 fishermen who presented with serious infections and skin lesions after coming into contact with what they claimed to be infected fish and contaminated water are mistaken.

Queensland Seafood Association president and cardio-surgeon Dr Michael Gardner doesn’t think so but swimming in the harbour has also been officially sanctioned by State Government authorities and all the kids who had to pack their fishing rods away during the school holidays can dust them off and get back out in the harbour while the dredging continues as part of a program to move 46 million cubic metres of silt.

Continue reading "Something’s really fishy in the Gladstone waters" »

The carbon tax debate has completely missed the point when it comes to looking after our environment and our health. It’s time to broaden the debate and realise that a healthy planet means much more than just the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Does it really matter if the earth remains a nice balmy temperature if the fish I eat are full of mercury, the air I breathe is full of particulate pollution and my fruit and veg are laced with organophosphates?

A new law is set to be passed in Bolivia - it’s called the ‘Law of Mother Earth’ (la Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra). Once enshrined it will grant nature the same rights and protections as human beings; it refers to natural resources as ‘blessings’. Sounds pretty out there, doesn’t it?

Continue reading "We’re drowning in pollution - a carbon tax won’t stop that" »

As the carbon tax starts to make its way through the legislative process, the Federal Opposition and peak business groups like the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Australian Industry Group, the Master Builders Association and others claim our economy or their part of it will be ruined by a price on carbon.

A similar view was apparent at a recent Oxford-style debate organised by Tom Switzer, editor of the conservative Spectator Magazine Australia.

The topic debated was “is a carbon tax needed to combat global warming”.

Continue reading "We can’t look beyond coal without pricing carbon" »

Bear Grylls makes brilliant telly. If watching a bloke sleep inside a camel carcass doesn’t make for a top night in front of the box, then what does?

And what about the time the former SAS man ate a giant larval worm which he described as tasting like a sausage made up of his mate’s boogers. The guy should try the café at the bottom of our building some time.

For all his showmanship and icky stunts, you sense there is a subtext to the Grylls gross out. By showcasing his own bravado and survival skills in some of the world’s greatest wild landscapes, he’s teaching his global audience of 1.2 billion about the wonder of the wilderness.

Continue reading "Bear Grylls: Environmental warrior or corporate sellout?" »

Apologies in advance to those with fixed views on a carbon tax. It is time the majority of Australians had a say. Well over half of us have shifted from supporting carbon pricing leading into Copenhagen to now opposing. In early 2008, my seat of Bowman had the highest carbon trading scepticism of seats polled by the Climate Institute; at 16 per cent. It now runs at nearly 70 per cent and it helps to remember why.

Let’s deal with the shame issue up front. Most Australians have little interest in national shame, be it border policies, the apology, shame about our live exports or the fact we mine and smelt.

Most Aussies are tired of being told by the elite we should be ashamed of our per capita emissions. We don’t leave our vehicles on in the garage at night. Our emissions correlate perfectly with our wealth, our energy intense export profile and that with the world’s second lowest population density; we travel further. I see no shame in that

Continue reading "No guilt, no shame in rejecting this tax, Australia" »

I was at the Press Club debate - how could I resist? I’ve also been lucky enough to see Ian Plimer talk.  Both Monckton and Plimer are wonderful, persuasive speakers. They are entirely affable, avuncular individuals who are entirely unafraid to blend fact and fiction in such a way that, to the uninformed listener, what they say can seem both reasonable and reassuring. 

Unconstrained by the need to actually tell the truth, and with a gift for cherrypicking facts that support their world-view (especially when taken out of context) they rattle off non-sequiturs and utter nonsense to support their main argument which is, in a nutshell, that the world is not warming, even if it was warming it’s not human activity driving it, and even if human activity is driving global warming, doing nothing at all about it is the best solution.

In one of two rather oblique references to the Nazi party, Monckton quoted Albert Einstein who maintained, quite rightly, that 100 people’s (ie a consensus) opinion is not needed to disprove a theory; in fact only one single fact is needed.

Continue reading "It’s time for direct action. No, not the Abbott kind." »

“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…”

Those are the most famous fighting words in modern history, uttered by Britain’s war-time Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill.

They inspired a nation to ultimate victory, but these days if he were an Australian Prime Minister or Opposition Leader, he could be talking about the Gillard Government’s controversial carbon tax.

Continue reading "Verbal battle lines drawn on carbon tax" »

The most interesting thing I’ve read all year about the climate-change debate is a book that has nothing directly to do with it.

Dan Gardner’s Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail and Why We Believe Them Anyway explores, well, the title pretty sums it up. Gardner runs through a laundry list of culture-shaping fears and hopes and points out that they were almost always wrong.

Capitalism didn’t end up on the ash heap of history. World War I didn’t turn out to be the war to end all wars. Society wasn’t plunged into anarchy by the Y2K bug. The nightmare scenario of overpopulation Malthusians have been banging on about since 1798 is yet to play out.

Continue reading "Warmist or denier, ye shall pay for your beliefs" »

Labor strategists believe that in normal circumstances, their Prime Minister has both sufficient time and enough fibre to turn things around.

Indeed, “fibre”, in this case “carbon fibre” is perhaps Julia Gillard’s last best hope. But first, she must get voters to listen.

And that is the hard part. As today’s Galaxy Poll suggests, many voters may never again be inclined to tune into `Gillard FM’, bruised as they are from what they see as an unforgivable breach of trust on the carbon tax.

Continue reading "No one’s tuning in to Gillard FM" »

Julia Gillard is asking many in middle Australia, maybe half of the electorate, if they are prepared to forego around $1 a day to prevent climate change getting a lot worse.

She is arguing that the $1 is a fair and realistic investment with a worthy and guaranteed dividend.

That’s the essential message from the huge bundle of spending and levying and tax cutting announced yesterday with the release of the carbon pollution pricing scheme.

Continue reading "Gillard’s won this skirmish but there’s a battle ahead" »

The Carbon Tax? It’s all about the vibe. Whether the Prime Minister stands or falls and whether the damn thing works, it’s all about the vibe.

First, the PM vibe – since her survival seems to be a topic for more immediate concern than the survival of the planet.

There are two crucial questions to ask about that. Are voters still listening to what Julia Gillard says or have they already switched off and are just waiting for an election? And just how much credibility does she have?

Continue reading "Carbon tax is no answer for all these questions" »

Julia Gillard has attempted the political equivalent of cold fusion - making a big new tax popular. Having backflipped on a promise not to introduce a carbon tax, and against trenchant opposition from a barnstorming Tony Abbott, Ms Gillard had little choice but to plough on, to crash or crash through.

Her solution after months of tortuous negotiations and endless parried questions on the details, is either genius or lunacy. Time will tell.

It has involved transforming what was expected to be a painful exercise in de-carbonising the economy into a big win for most voters.

Continue reading "Spoonful of sugar helps carbon medicine go down" »

Christopher Monckton – the British hereditary peer formerly known as ‘Lord’* – has revealed plans of a possible Government plot to silence him.

The renowned climate change sceptic has had a turbulent visit to our shores, with a string of appearances cancelled, an on-air dust up with Adam Spencer, and a reported order from Fairfax to remove the title ‘Lord’ when referring to his Monckness.

This morning, Monckton told the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster (please do note the irony here) that he had wind of a plot to shut him up. He told Adelaide breakfast radio duo Matthew Abraham and David Bevan:

Continue reading "Oh Lordy, Monckton, it’s a Government plot" »

The second most appallingly idiotic consequence of the Greens’ decision to block an emissions trading scheme – and let’s face it there is some very strong competition – is that it has managed to turn a debate over what to do about climate change into a debate over whether it is even real or not.

It’s hard to believe, but just a couple of years ago the vast majority of the public overwhelmingly supported action on man-made global warming and a comprehensive carbon pollution reduction scheme was all but inevitable, with strong bi-partisan support led by the top minds of the Labor and Liberal parties.

But then the flat-earth faction of the Coalition revolted and Malcolm Turnbull was assassinated in one of the more disappointing but thoroughly entertaining episodes of Australian politics. (Remember when Kevin Andrews was going to be Opposition Leader? Good times.)

Continue reading "ETS backflip makes me feel green about the gills" »

Listening to the sometimes facile public debate about population growth, it seems that all Australia needs to do to address our population issues is ditch ‘big Australia’ in favour of ‘sustainable population’.

With a debate as shallow as this, it’s little wonder that we’ve made little headway in addressing our growing pains.

In 2009, when Kevin Rudd dug the first few feet of his political grave with his declaration in support of a ‘Big Australia’, population growth — led by higher birth rates and record migration — was at an all-time high.  With Rudd safely out of The Lodge, Gillard and Abbott raced to the election trying to see who could distance themselves furthest from the former PM’s sentiments.

Continue reading "Big Australia is coming, like it or not" »

“This is enough to choke a horse,” confided Bill Clinton - “this” being climate change, “one of the two or three biggest challenges in the world”. Clinton was speaking in April in a joint interview with New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Together, the “big dawg” former president and the diminutive, billionaire mayor have formed what amounts to an informal, two-man committee to save the world.

It’s not a new concept. The original ‘committee to save the world’ was conjured up in 1999 by the journalist Joshua Cooper Ramo, who appointed the then-Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, US Treasury secretary Robert Rubin and the man who would succeed him, Larry Summers.

Continue reading "Political dream team unite to save the world" »

The Labor Government’s carbon pricing plans have come under fire again, with polls showing most Australians think they’ll be losing out - but does the Liberal Government have an alternative plan? Last night Q and A showed a clip of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott convincingly arguing that a carbon tax could work… Here, Amanda Rishworth casts her eye over Tony Abbott’s Direct Action Plan.

In recent weeks Tony Abbott has stepped up his hysterical tour of dry cleaning services, cereal factories, fish markets and even nappy factories to tout the potential increase in cost of living pressures under a carbon price. However, during these visits he pointedly avoids making any mention of his own climate change policy - a policy which Professor Ross Garnaut has said in his recent report will cost more and do less.

Tony Abbott continues to mount his fear campaign about the Government’s plan to price carbon in the Parliament, and yet you would be hard pressed to recall him ever mentioning his own plan.

Continue reading "Naysayer Abbott’s plan is no alternative" »

So the left-wing apologists from Get Up and the ACTU are now imploring us to just “say yes” to Labor’s Carbon Tax. 

They may as well have added “this won’t hurt a bit, honest” to their patronizing new advertisement.

I’ve often thought that the moral supremacists at Get Up occupied a very different Australia to the one in which I live.

Continue reading "A carbon price? Tell ‘em they’re dreaming" »

The Government will be hoping that the convoluted and dense reckoning of professor Ross Garnaut will counter the slick and glib one-liners of Tony Abbott.

The Opposition has successfully been telling the public that a “carbon tax” - or on occasion the “toxic tax” - will wreck household budgets already flattened by other cost-increasing factors.

The proposed carbon price has been depicted as a financial horror which would dwarf those already-punishing family expenses.

Continue reading "Carbon pricing: At least Garnaut hasn’t been gagged" »

Now we are means-testing people for the right to have an opinion in television commercials, it seems that only those who struggle with absolute penury can speak for Australians.

Everyone else is tainted by the bias of success and salaries.

Billionaires can’t complain about higher taxes on super-profits; screen stars can’t complain about pollution.

Continue reading "It’s a bit rich to gag the wealthy on carbon pricing" »

The climate change debate has never been hotter, with family groups outraged that Cate Blanchett (among others) has thrown her not-particularly-substantial weight behind carbon pricing. Here, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition’s Anna Rose talks about the need for urgent action.

Sixteen-year-old Alana volunteers with the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. When asked why, she tells the following story: “When I was 14 my brother was born. When I first saw him, I thought about his future and I almost couldn’t face it. I couldn’t bear to think about the world that he was going to grow up in to. So I decided to do something about it.”

Life is very different for young Australians today. Gone are the days when young people can plan our futures without factoring in an ominous shadow looming over our plans for our lives, careers and families. Not since the Cold War have young Australians faced a future so uncertain.

Continue reading "Climate change: Bugger Cate, we must ALL act" »

The internet’s made everyone an expert, so now all these self-professed sceptics believe climate change is bunkum because Google told them so.

The vast sea of information online means that any conclusion is possible; just phrase your search string carefully and it will tell you what you want to hear.

And then you have all sorts of links as ‘evidence’ that you are right and all the world’s top scientists are wrong. Without the right tools of critical thought, a poorly written blog by Dr Bumfluff from the Convenient Truthiness Association trumps anything the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could come up with.

Continue reading "All climate change theories were not created equal" »

As a scientist who studies natural climatic disruptions of the distant past and finds disturbing parallels with the vast changes that we’re setting in motion with today’s fossil fuel emissions, I’ve long favoured a switch to alternative energy sources.

But having been an anti-nuke protester back in my college days, I’ve also been reluctant to support nuclear power thanks to the unresolved problems of meltdowns, waste storage, bomb proliferation, and terrorism. 

Nonetheless, my attitude changed several months ago after a chance conversation with a geologist friend whose son is training to become nuclear engineer.  “He’s working on a new kind of reactor,” my friend explained, “It can’t melt down, it makes only minimal waste, and it can’t be used for making bombs.  Instead of running on uranium, it uses thorium instead, which is a lot safer to work with.” 

Continue reading "Thorium: Is this clean, green energy too good to be true?" »

Australia must act immediately on climate change or risk social, economic and environmental disaster, the Climate Commission’s first major report says. Here’s your quick and easy guide to the rest of the good news.

The report, The Critical Decade, reviews the latest climate science and says it unambiguously shows the climate is changing, and humans are “almost surely” the cause. It slams the sceptics, saying there is no debate within the scientific community on the reality of climate change.

It argues a carbon pricing mechanism is necessary to curb emissions and says we must act urgently or “we will struggle to maintain our present way of life”.

Continue reading "Climate change report: A busy person’s guide" »

While the national focus has been on a carbon tax, piecemeal Federal and State Government policies encouraging households to take up renewable energy have been overcooking parts of a cake that had only started to bake.

Two very different segments of the solar energy sector are now experiencing extreme turbulence because of well-meaning but flawed efforts by policymakers to push households into a greener future.

The household renewable energy industry is in flux. Over-generous State feed-in tariffs, an unstable rebate platform and the Federal Government’s “one size fits all” renewable energy certificate trading scheme are culprits.

Continue reading "The most confusing energy policies under the sun" »

Early-onset or ‘precocious’ puberty is on the rise, thanks to increasing child obesity levels and possibly environmental hormones.

Now, scientists from the Conds Institute have pinpointed a trend towards early-onset middle age, and their hypothesis is that it could also have to do with obesity and sedentary lifestyles.

They warn that Australians in their 30s or early 40s may already be experiencing a range of symptoms including stray hair, inadvertent grunting, and increasing issues with bodily secretions.

Continue reading "Got ear hair? It could be a sign of something serious" »

Good health is fundamental to our lives, so in assessing whether a government decision is good, bad or just acceptable it is useful to apply the health criterion. If this was applied to every decision, no doubt government would improve. I am going to apply this criterion to the Adelaide Oval.

Our health has two fundamental needs. Easy to understand is the need for hospitals, emergency services, life support systems (intensive care) and family doctors. Waiting lists and hospital closures are rightly big news.

Even more fundamental to health are the natural life support systems, the natural resources, water, availability of productive, non-degraded land, biodiversity and stable climate. These are deteriorating, and scientists have used the words global environmental change to describe them. This change is accelerating.

Continue reading "Stuff Adelaide Oval, let’s fix the environment first" »

By the time Francis Ona and the various factions of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army permanently laid down their arms on 30 April 1998, it is estimated that more than 15,000 Bougainvillians had lost their lives.

The decade long conflict – part war of independence, part civil war - had been the most bloody and costly war in the Pacific since WWII. At the turn of the millennium, Bougainville was a place of devastation.

Bougainville has long loomed large in the consciousness of many Australians.

Continue reading "Bougainvillians deserve the chance to say “it’s mine”" »

The “Statement of Principles” signed by the timber industry, the timber union and environmental organisations late last year is easily the best chance for decades to end Tasmania’s debilitating “forest wars”.

Every single organisation that signed on took a risk.  A risk that the process would founder through Government intransigence, a risk of being outflanked and denounced by opportunists within their own constituencies, a risk that circumstances may deliver outcomes for their traditional opponents, but not for their own interests.

One of the most fascinating issues now that we have started to move into the ‘delivery’ phase, however, is the high stakes power play developing between the “environmental” greens and the “political” greens.

Continue reading "Environmental Greens versus Political Greens" »

The carbon debate at the moment is a bit like the story of Chicken Little. Just as Chicken Little declared that the sky was falling, we’re seeing a lot of people in the business community claiming that the introduction of a carbon price will spell disaster for Australian exports, jobs and industries.

(We cheated here and went for the Hokey Pokey rather than Henny Penny. But the clip is worth a re-visit.)

BHP Billiton and Xstrata want protection on coal exports; BlueScope Steel and OneSteel want steel manufacturing exempted from a carbon price; Woodside Petroleum want LNG exports to be exempted from a carbon price.  To top it off, we’ve had the Australian Workers Union declare its opposition if a single job is lost as a result of a carbon price. And the Australian Food and Grocery Council is now calling for exemptions and running the line that food prices will rise.

You would be forgiven for thinking the Chicken is right.

Continue reading "The Chicken Littles will have egg on their faces" »

Greg Combet has more policy hounds on his tail than any other minister. He is in charge of the introduction of a “carbon tax”, and the arguments against him have been outnumbering those for.

So the Climate Change Minister went to the National Press Club to highlight—and he hoped erase—some of those policy problems which are dogging this attempt to get up a pricing mechanism for carbon pollution.

He all but ticked them off, one by one, in front of the audience.

Continue reading "Combet on carbon: What he said and what he meant" »

Justice may be blind, but many Australian farmers find the scales are tipped against them as they struggle to come to terms with a growing minefield of environmental regulations on top of other natural enemies.

They are not fighting the concept of land management, but the way in which their properties can be ‘locked up’ or confiscated without proper compensation. They can be prosecuted for something suddenly illegal under frequent amendments to vegetation laws which can be applied retrospectively. The farmer is virtually presumed guilty until innocence can be proven, often at great expense.

Those who live in cities and urban areas might find this difficult to comprehend. The following events are more suited to a communist dictatorship but they happened in our “free country” …

Continue reading "Laws of the land create an unjust environment" »

It has taken humanity less than a million years to claw its way to the top of the food chain. Just because we’re number one it shouldn’t follow that we act like humanoid equivalents of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, madly devouring everything in our path and laying waste to the lesser creatures. And that includes cuttlefish.

This isn’t intended as some animal rights rant. Groups like PETA are off with the fairies. Vegetarianism seems a militant lifestyle choice when pursued as a matter of morality, rather than simply as a valid response to not liking the taste of meat, especially on the part of those who can see no inconsistency between rejecting flesh but happily wearing leather shoes.

That said, there are some members of the human race who don’t seem to have evolved far beyond the T-Rex in their hostility towards the more vulnerable and less intelligent members of the foodchain.

Continue reading "Cuttlefish are people too" »

When NSW Labor is wiped off the map tomorrow, it will partly be because, as Joe Hildebrand pointed out, the Labor government has rather impressively committed every sin known to mankind. But mostly, it’ll be because the government is widely viewed as having reduced this state to tatters. The question is: Is NSW really in such bad nick?

I have lived in NSW for about 30 of my 41 years. The sun still shines, the trains still crawl and the water still runs, except of course for that time in 1998 when it was full of nasty parasites.

In most respects, this state is nowhere near the basket case some make it out to be. Obviously, NSW would have benefited from something approaching a competent government for much of the last 16 years, but it’s not all gloom and doom in Woolloomooloo, and beyond. Let’s take a closer look.

Continue reading "NSW: It’s not actually that bad. No, really." »

What do you call a fishing town with no fishing? Dead.

So you’d hope the South Australian government is genuine about wanting frank feedback on its idea of introducing 140 no-fishing zones along our coastline next year.

Some of my most enduring childhood memories involve tinnie boats and tangled lines. A day in the dinghy wasn’t just fun, it was an exercise in patience and perseverance, a bonding experience of family against fish, and on good days it was a few free meals for the freezer.

Continue reading "No-go fishing zones, bait for amateur anglers" »

The recent revelation that new Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery has a contract with Meat and Livestock Australia shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody who read his 2008 Quarterly Essay Now or Never: A sustainable future for Australia.

But I think both the relationship and the essay demonstrate that Flannery is not the right person for the job.

Flannery’s advocacy in Now or Never of abundant meat as the answer to global food problems is like suggesting private jets to solve transportation problems.

Continue reading "Meat: Why Tim Flannery is wrong" »

Bigger is better even if it’s top heavy and somewhat false.

Carbon tax or not, Australia’s carbon emissions will keep rising, driven by rapid rates of population growth (A Bigger Australia) and increasing affluence. Most of the carbon is domestic but we also own the carbon that China and other manufacturers emit when they make stuff we purchase from our malls and big box stores.

The ‘Bigger Australia’ much loved by Kevin Rudd and the top end of town surfaced again in the last federal election when both major parties scrambled for a ‘right-sized Australia’ driven by disenchantment in marginal electorates where services are tight and solutions oft promised.

Continue reading "Population policy is driven by the Dolly Parton syndrome" »

This week in Parliament the Government pointedly refused to rule out a carbon tax on petrol. A $26 a tonne carbon price on petrol would add about $3 to the cost of filling up a car. This would be on top of the carbon tax’s impact on power bills, which the Australian Industry Group this week predicted would go up $300 a year thanks to carbon pricing alone.

Before the last election, the Prime Minister repeatedly ruled out a carbon tax.

As part of her deal with the Greens to cling to power, she has specifically embraced a price on carbon and has promised to establish a carbon taxing regime next year. A carbon tax would cascade through the economy ultimately adding to virtually every price.  Every time you turn on the lights you will pay under Labor’s carbon tax. Every time you go to the petrol pump you will pay under Labor’s carbon tax.

Continue reading "Gillard never met a tax she didn’t like and hike" »

When my parents lived in the Queensland town of Gympie in the ‘70s there was an unofficial but strict allocation of civic duties come flood time.

Gympie is an old gold town and the gouging for riches had perverted every natural water course, redirecting the flow through the main streets.

Shop walls displayed the heights previous floods had reached, and it was always accepted there were more to come.

Continue reading "You can’t take climate change out of the flood equation" »

Sometimes it takes a disaster to shake the complacency out of us. To rethink the attitude of ‘she’ll be right’ when clearly things are not right.

So isn’t it time to develop a national masterplan to help guide future planning and development in this country to try and stop the increasing loss of life and damage that the natural forces around Australia unleash?

If you look at the past decade there have many natural disasters, both fire and flood, which have destroyed so many homes. We have seen the fires in Victoria which swept through the hill communities of Flowerdale, Kinglake and Marysville in 2009 destroying over 2,000 homes and taking 173 lives. Back in 1983 Ash Wednesday fires in South Australia destroyed 2,400 homes.

Continue reading "We need a masterplan to deal with worsening disasters" »

Is the end nigh?

After all, 100,000 fish have washed up dead in Arkansas; 5,000 red-winged blackbirds fell from the sky on New Year’s Eve in the community of Beebe, northeast of Little Rock; 500 dead birds were discovered in Louisiana; 100 jackdaw birds were found lying dead in the street in Sweden; several hundred birds found dead in Kentucky; 100s of dead snapper wash up on a beach in New Zealand; 40,000 dead crabs wash up on the beach in the UK; an estimated 200 fish wash up on the shores in Maryland; 100 tonnes of sardines are found on beaches in Brazil.

Finally, in possibly the strangest turn of events of recent times, North Korean state television broadcast the first ever Western movie to be shown in the dictatorial state- and chose Bend It Like Beckham.

Continue reading "Is it the end of the world as we know it?" »

I am a big supporter of energy efficiency initiatives and want to see all Australian homes retrofitted with energy and dollar saving technologies from blocking up drafts, solar hot water and insulation to double glazing.

It is a no brainer in a world desperate to reduce fossil fuel emissions and power bills to roll out a national energy efficiency scheme to reduce costs to the planet and to the householder.  But Green Start is not the way to proceed. Australia needs a National Energy Efficiency Target like the Renewable Energy Target that is a market based mechanism delivered by the private sector according to clear rules set by government. I agree with Minister Combet that it is not a good idea to throw good money after bad.

So what went so wrong with the Rudd government’s Green Loans election promise of 2007?

Continue reading "Green loans - a great idea mismanaged into a debacle" »

The UN Climate negotiations in Cancun, Mexico will be wrapped up this week after two weeks of steady negotiations. Delegates are furiously trying to reach consensus so that decisions can be made by Friday this week.

The story that seems to have gained the most traction back home is the question of Kyoto’s survival. Journalists seem to be advocating a range of conflicting messages – from the immanent death of the treaty to the fighting hope of its perseverance.

Reality is a little more nuanced than that and the Kyoto Protocol is one of myriad issues that need to be resolved in the next week. None the less, it is certainly not time to write off Kyoto.

Continue reading "Will Kyoto survive Cancun?" »

Ban the bomb, no new mines, the three mines policy, additional mines, street marches, fear of nuclear terrorism and the existence of rogue states with nuclear power or weaponry have all been elements in the debate about uranium mining, processing or nuclear power for a long time.

Perhaps its time to get past emotion fear and inconsistency and concentrate on rational debate in a coherent manner.

We are a blessed continent with more than adequate supplies of coal, gas and oil. We are major exporters to the rest of the world in each of these commodities. As I write new sources of energy like coal seam gas, costing tens of billions of dollars have become mainstream in Australia.

Continue reading "Clinging to old nuclear fears stifles the power debate" »

U2’s 360 degrees tour has touched down in Australia and is in full swing. Much like the main feature of the tour, stories have been coming from every direction on how extravagant the concert is. How the big scale, big vision, and big cost have lead to the biggest concert event ever.

You have to admit, the numbers are pretty impressive.

U2’s two year world tour has run up an $850,000 dollars daily running cost, and last year took $123 million as the highest grossing tour of 2009. ‘The claw’ stage that dominates the band as they play towers at an impressive height of 164 feet. It is so large that it took six 747 jets to get it to Australia.

Continue reading "U2 isn’t exactly practicing what it preaches" »

Opening this week is a small, yet powerful, documentary on the ill-effects of using the controversial “fracking” technique to extract natural gas.

Now, I’m not a scientist, or a geologist, but I am a film reviewer, and watching Gasland was illuminating enough to allow the mere mention of natural gas to prompt a range of pretty terrifying images.

So when a story broke over the weekend that suggests natural gas mining may soon become a reality for inner Sydney, it’s clear that the timing for the release of this powerful documentary film could not be more apt.

Continue reading "Clover, before you mine Sydney, watch Gasland" »

Recently I was at an airport, about to set off on a 24-hour long haul flight.

If you’ve ever travelled on a plane and felt frustrated at hearing a crying baby on a nearby seat, multiply that frustration and stress by ten and you’ll understand what the parents are going through.

Having a young family myself, I’ve been there plenty.

Continue reading "Taking out the trash" »

The release of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s guide to the Basin Plan has ignited discussion about how we manage this critical system for the long term. It has been disappointing to see over recent weeks the Coalition now walking away from reform in the basin, reform that even the previous Howard Government saw as necessary.

Coalition members are now arguing that taking action in the basin will be tantamount to choosing the environment over rural communities. This argument is based on a false dichotomy. Reforming the Murray Darling system is not a choice between the interests of producers and the environment- reform is in the interest of all those who rely on this vital river system, to secure its long-term health and viability. Indeed the aim of the Water Act is to manage our water resources in such a way as to optimise environmental, economic and social outcomes.

The worst thing that could happen for everyone in the Basin, whether it’s someone who cares about the environmental assets of the river system or a farmer wanting to continue to make a sustainable living, is for the Government to do nothing. An unmanaged and unhealthy water supply is no use to anyone.

Continue reading "Opposing river reform puts us on a slow boat to nowhere" »

The green people consulted “the science” and demanded human sacrifice to the river to make it well.

The writer of the Murray darling Commission draft report, that suddenly became a guide to the draft report (yet to be seen), declared that the legislation establishing the Commission required him to ignore the socio-economic effects of taking away irrigation entitlements and first concentrate on the wellbeing of the river – very green.

Trouble is the Water Act establishing the Commission in fact did require the Commission to consider the impact on people, communities and livelihoods. Section 3 (c) of the Water Act clearly sets out that the objectives of the Act include economic and social considerations.

Continue reading "Weird green science sells the people up the river" »

My kids love playing in parks – I think every kid does.

Swings, slides and see-saws can sometimes be a God-send for parents who need a break.

Tell the kids to go off and play and if you’re lucky, there could be five minutes of freedom in it for you too.

Continue reading "Kids, swings, parks and needles don’t mix" »

I just returned from almost three weeks in Hong Kong. It is a city that I fell in love with some five years ago when I worked there with Oxfam Hong Kong.

There is a great deal that Australia’s major cities could learn from Hong Kong: it is a city that promotes and rewards efficiency, cleanliness and creativity – aspects that we often neglect.

This is clearly evident in the integrated design of the public transport system that is regular, clean, safe and on time. (Please note NSW State Rail Authority: the definition of ‘on time’ does not change at regular intervals but is kind of set). For example, last Saturday I missed a bus – my irritation was subdued when I informed the next one was ‘four minutes’ away. We can compare this to the two-hour gap between busses on the 370 route between Leichhardt and Coogee which I was faced with only a week later: and this is in the eastern suburbs if Sydney – the best served public transport corridor.

Continue reading "How we think about water is a classic progress trap" »

After all the scorn and criticism surrounding the much talked of, somewhat derided, plan for a Citizen’s Assembly Gillard has just announced a new plan to tackle climate change, in the form of a multi-party climate change committee; investigating and deliberating over the best way to implement a price on carbon.

Gillard’s definitely singing a different tune to her pre-election decisiveness that she had “ruled out” the possibility of a carbon tax under any government she lead.

Now, after a lot of somewhat hysterical party shuffling, repositioning, negotiating and endless demands and speeches. Gillard is most certainly leading her misshapen, conglomerate government, and the possibility of a carbon tax is most certainly back on the table.

Continue reading "Climate committee is no citizens assembly, thank God" »

The drama of the 2010 federal election came to an end as the independent MPs Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor threw their support behind Labor. This has an immediate impact on Australian climate policy.

A Gillard minority government promises a new cross-party Climate Change Committee to spearhead carbon-pricing legislation in the next term of government. This agenda will face stiff opposition, but with the right design, it can help move Australia towards a low-carbon economy.

Both Labor and the Greens support the notion of carbon pricing but have not yet agreed on the specific mechanism for doing so. (Labor attempted to pass an emissions-trading bill in its last term, however the Senate twice rejected the government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. The Coalition opposed the CPRS because it was too onerous, and Greens because it was too weak. As a stopgap measure, the Greens proposed an ‘interim carbon price’ of $20 per tonne for two years, but Rudd and Gillard dismissed the idea.)

Continue reading "What we still need to know about a carbon price" »

At the start of this year, the Greens were huddled in a little cottage in the Tasmanian wilderness, admiring some magnificent trees.

But someone spoilt the serenity and raised an uncomfortable topic for a left-wing environmental party. “What are our economic policies?”

“I hadn’t given it much thought”, Greens leader, Bob Brown said.

“But we should have economic policies. We are Australia’s third largest political party and may hold the balance of power in the Senate after the next election. We need to say something on the economy.”

“True”, said Brown, still distracted by an exquisite Gum tree out the window. “Does anyone in the room know anything about economics?”

There was an uncomfortable silence in the room.

Continue reading "Left-wing Greens grapple with economics" »

As the country enters yet another day of political limbo, at least one element of the recent federal election is clear: the Australian people want genuine action on climate change.

Over a week has passed since voters rejected both the major parties, creating our first hung parliament in seventy years and only the second in our history. The electorate’s disapproval of each alternative government manifested in a swell of support for the Greens and independents, who now hold the balance of power in both houses of parliament.

This unique situation seems in no small part to have arisen from Labor and the Coalition’s reluctance to offer substantive policies to mitigate global warming—the issue heralded as the greatest moral and economic challenge of our time.

Continue reading "Political limbo: hung for lack of climate vision" »

As we enter the last few days of the election campaign, climate change seems to have Tony Abbott in a muddle. As his record shows, he seems to be confused about whether he understands the science or not, and whether he believes in emissions trading or not.

First, his position was that the consensus on climate science was crap. Then he backed an emissions trading scheme when it was Howard’s last hope of winning over a dissatisfied electorate. 

When that didn’t work, he reverted back to his original views and ousted Malcolm Turnbull, telling a group of school students that it was warmer at the time of Jesus. Now he tells us that climate change is important, but he doesn’t want a price on pollution, ever. Boy, is Tony Abbott one confused man.

Continue reading "Confusion vs inaction: our leaders’ real climate colours" »

Sometimes I feel we get stuck due to a failure of imagination. We know we need to change, but don’t know how. The climate crisis creates this feeling in a lot of people I know, because the problem seems just too big and the changes too hard.

The idea of an Australian economy run entirely by clean renewable energy is one that I’m sure most of us would love to see become reality. However, we are told that because the wind doesn’t blow all the time and the sun doesn’t shine all the time it isn’t possible. Or maybe it is a nice idea but unaffordable and potentially damaging to the Australian economy.

Continue reading "A startling new vision for repowering Australia" »

The queasy feeling in my stomach as I flew into Sydney after five weeks in Europe had little to do with the turbulence and even less to do with the 764 unopened emails that found their way into my inbox between London and Singapore. Rather, the source of the unease was that I was landing at the beginning of an election cycle. Most of us suspect that this election is going to be short on substance and will provide us with little vision for our future.

As someone who consumes political commentary, I have grown increasingly disillusioned by both a government and opposition who swing from the banal to the ridiculous. For many of us, this election is less about voting for who inspires us, and more about who is least likely to offer an absurd policy vision.

My sense of dread has not eased as we enter the second week of the election cycle marked by a leaders debate that was focussed on the bland. The question is whether this is likely to continue?  Here are five policy areas that may well provide a guide: will we see real policy discussion or be served up glib one-liners?

Continue reading "This campaign is enough to turn off even political junkies" »

Senator Bob Brown has his cranky pants on because the Greens are not included in the leaders’ debate between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott. According to Brown, the Greens should get a go on Sunday as the potential balance of powerpuffs in the Senate.

Acknowledging he has more chance of contesting the MasterChef final than the debate, Brown thinks the major parties are running scared. “Julia and Tony don’t want the Greens there showing them up on issues like Afghanistan, like [e]quality in marriage, like greening the economy, like a carbon price, like better funding for public education and for health”.

Yet for all their grandstanding, do the Greens really deserve a turn with the worm? One of the great untold stories of federal politics in recent months is the under-performance of the Greens.

Continue reading "Grandstanding Greens aren’t ready for the big league" »

Perhaps the lack of bold vision for Australia in the election campaign thus far can be understood by looking at what happened to Kevin Rudd. He was the last mainstream political leader to stand before the country making bold promises about the future, and look where he ended up.

John Howard may have been victim of a tired electorate looking for a change in 2007, but he was also hobbled by the thousand pin-pricks sustained in attacks by left-wingers on a range of issues.

The “Howard haters” were angry about the Iraq war, reconciliation, asylum seekers, and climate change. Rudd said he would do something about all of these. In what is now one of the great political parables about the dangers of overpromising, Rudd’s efforts in some of these areas would ultimately prove his undoing.

Continue reading "Whither the loud lefties?" »

Deaths, house fires and safety concerns have seen the Rudd/Gillard Government and Peter Garrett take plenty of heat over the disastrous Home Insulation Program, but three damning reports released last week reveal the failed $300 million Green Loans program was mismanaged on a similar scale.

The aforementioned deaths and house fires have understandably commanded more attention, but the scope of maladministration highlighted last week show that Peter Garrett has just as much to answer for over Green Loans and seriously calls into question the capacity of this Government to deliver whatever its latest climate change policies might entail.

Of key concern is that the report of the Faulkner inquiry (conducted by former Victorian Department of Human Services secretary Patricia Faulkner) identified 149 breaches or issues with Government procurement and contracting guidelines and legislation, including deliberate and systemic breaches with allegations of kickbacks to departmental staff.

Continue reading "Green Loans an insulation-style mess" »

The Labor government is clearing the decks to position itself for the forthcoming federal election. After resolving the mining tax dispute, and adopting a position on asylum seekers, climate change is the last issue Gillard must address before the campaign. Whatever policy the Gillard government adopts must account for the scale of the climate crisis.

Current levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are already so high that if unchecked will push the climate system past significant tipping points. This worst-case scenario poses an unacceptable risk of dangerous and irreversible changes to the climate, to biodiversity, and human civilisation. These adverse climate changes will affect Australia’s food and water security, and increase the risk of regional instability.

The worst of these impacts can be avoided, but only if Australia, together with other major polluters acts now and at a scale the challenge demands.

Continue reading "The route to make Australia a world leader in clean energy" »

Scientists at the University of East Anglia have emerged from the six-month “climategate” inquiry with their reputations for honesty intact. However, many in the public remain skeptical, so the challenge for scientists across the world now is to communicate clearly the realities of climate change to a public that simply wants straight answers.

The Independent Climate Change Email Review in the United Kingdom, led by Sir Muir Russell, a former top civil servant, concluded that “the rigour and honesty” of the UEA scientists “was not in doubt” and that there was no evidence “that might undermine the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments”.

The challenge of clearly and openly communicating climate change to a public understandably alarmed about the associated changes to our world is as real in Australia as it is for people in other countries. Sir Muir has put the challenge for scientists into plain English: “They should learn to communicate their work in ways that the public can access and understand.” 

Continue reading "After climategate, the science still has the same message" »

Among the many hazards that you might encounter during a long overseas trip, perhaps the worst one is starting to sound like the Lonely Planet.

I don’t mean just quoting the guidebooks’ neat little factoids and pat judgments in place of any other real conversation or insight, something my wife and I have been reduced to doing for the past few months of our world trip.

A more serious sign of the malady is when you start to refer to yourself as an “independent traveller”, the standard description the books employ for their readership.

Continue reading "There’s no more nobility in travelling on the cheap" »

Apparently, anti-whaling activist Peter Bethune is pretty chipper for a guy who could be spending the next 15 years in a Japanese prison. Perhaps he’ll feel especially vindicated by today’s news that the federal government is taking legal action to try and put an end to Japanese whaling.

But in contrast to the mindless and increasingly dangerous anarchism of the Sea Shepherd protesters, legal action by Australia in the International Court of Justice has the potential to save an actual whale.

The high-seas harassment of whalers has become increasingly dangerous and, well,  bit embarrassing. Bethune, you may remember, was the skipper of stealth boat the Ady Gil, who picked a fight with an Japanese industrial whaling ship and lost. The Adi Gil sank and in a surreal denouement Bethune later boarded the Shonan Maru 2, with a knife, trying to put the captain under citizen’s arrest.

Continue reading "At last, action that might actually stop Japan’s whaling" »

Last July I had dinner with Malcolm Fraser and a small group in the Karagheusian Room in University House at the University of Melbourne. The dinner was in honour of my brother in law Gerry Simpson, who had just delivered his Inaugural Professorial Lecture, entitled “War Crimes Trials, Solemnity and the Problem of Evil”.

The evening displayed symbols of ancient, privileged University traditions that clash with contemporary political life. Waiters served us pre-Master Chef dishes on good china, surrounded by walnut antique furniture from Paris and a Brueghel III oil painting peered down on us through the centuries. Mr Fraser was relaxed and comfortable.

Our conversations turned to climate change, of course. I said I thought the legal profession should do more to litigate against polluters and regulators. I understand that there is no climate law under which to run cases, but if the planet is burning, that is enough of a smoking gun for this bush lawyer.

Continue reading "Dinner with Malcolm, and how the Libs can regroup" »

Rather than evolving something that would be really useful like an extra 3D lens in the eye or fingers that are better suited to typing on a QWERTY keyboard, we’re going to start living in trees and evolve a hook thumb that lets us grab branches.

This isn’t to detract from the extraordinary imagination displayed by Ryan Hopwood in his vision of humans in a future Earth with less gravity and a different atmosphere. It’s impressive, thought-provoking work that throws a light on some of the challenges humanity faces adapting to whatever changes may lie ahead in the environment.

But after millions of years of evolving in one direction - smarter - even if Earth’s gravity does reduce and the climate heats up, are we really going to say, “Screw it, let’s go live in the trees”?

Continue reading "Future man: Ugly, lives in trees, cannot use an iPad" »

Here’s a fact you might hear repeated quite a bit over the coming months. The past 12 months were the hottest ever.

Data from NASA reportedly confirms the period from May 2009 to April 2010 was the hottest 12-month period in its records. This does rather challenge the view, which has been increasingly fashionable, that climate change is questionable or might not be happening at all.

The embarrassment of the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia and evidence of dodgy studies being cited by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were hugely damaging to the standing of the scientific arguments that the world is heating up. But the scientists are back in the saddle, publishing a stream of evidence that climate change is still doing quantifiable damage to the planet. This week there have been some doozies.

Continue reading "The global warming debate heats up again" »

If this Budget is supposed to get Australia doing its part in solving “the greatest moral challenge of our time”, then it is a failure. While there is $652 million over 4 years in new money for clean energy, this pales into insignificance compared with, for example, $27.7 billion over 6 years for roads.

As I said yesterday, this is a very unclear budget, lacking a clear strategy on energy and other resources.

Treasurer Wayne Swan said in his speech that climate change (which he mentioned 4 times)  is one of “three key challenges”  for the Budget, along with the return to full economic capacity after the GFC and and the costs of an ageing population. But the funding announced fell far short of this rhetoric.

Continue reading "Swan says climate is a key challenge but fails to meet it" »

For three weeks I have been anxiously waiting for an answer from President Barack Obama. Not to me, unfortunately, but to my old friend Danny Kennedy, who recently met POTUS in the Rose Garden of the White House.

Danny Kennedy is a solar entrepreneur in San Franscisco. His company Sungevity has offered to install a US$108,000, 17.85kW solar PV system on the roof of the White House, which would supply 81% of its electricity needs. The Secret Service can even see a handy photoshopped image of the rig, to check the security implications.

The public campaign behind the solar offer, Solar on the White House, or ‘Globama’ is not merely a smart PR exercise. Danny and other ambitious green capitalists know that the political economy is built not just of steel and dollars but stories and symbols. When we change these things, we change the rules that shape political reality.

Continue reading "Last-minute Budget item: cash for energy symbols" »

Australia’s population will be a major issue at the coming federal election.  Not just because of the ongoing problems with Labor’s border protection laws but because Australians are increasingly concerned with the sustainability of our country.

Last year in a rare moment of clarity the Prime Minister made very clear that he ‘believed’ in a ‘big Australia’.  He made these comments on the day that his government announced its population target for Australia of 36 million by 2050

Continue reading "Don’t forget sustainability in the population debate" »

If ever there was a sign we’re pretty powerless in the face of Mother Nature it’s thousands of tonnes of ash and molten lava spewing out of the earth and making air travel impossible for millions of frustrated would-be travellers.

The eruption of Eyjafjallajokull (according to the New York Times it sounds a little like “Hey, ya fergot La Yogurt”) has been greeted as a mass inconvenience.

Holiday makers and business people the world over have nodded sagely while being told their plane has been grounded because of the real chance it could come hurtling towards the earth with its engines disabled by airborne rubble and sighed: “yeah, but I really need to get to that meeting/I’ve been saving for this holiday for years/but it’s Anzac Day on Sunday!”

I’m half expecting to see footage in the coming days of Aussie backpackers in Frankfurt demanding Kevin Rudd send in the Air Force to rescue them, such is the sense of entitlement we have about our ability to flit around the world unhindered by anything as pesky as a major natural event.

Continue reading "What’s Kevin Rudd going to do about Eyjafjallajokull!" »

When nature decides to ruin an entire continent’s day it’s a great reminder of how far technology has come in recent decades. The last time this Icelandic volcano let rip like this there weren’t jets noodling around the skies over Europe.

Associated Press has provided a handy syllable-by-syllable guide to pronouncing the name of the volcano responsible. Eyjafjallajokull: ay-yah-FYAH’-plah-yer-kuh-duhl. A doddle. Probably worth tuning into the 6pm TV news to see how it goes.

European airports have had to shut down as aircraft could literally fall out of the sky because of the ash plume spreading over the continent. More than half a million travellers are affected and some estimates put the economic cost at around half a billion Australian dollars. You may mention climate change in the comments.

Continue reading "Volcano: Whole continent goes for a smoke (pics)" »

Predictions for Australia’s population seem to be going up like bids at an auction.

Three years ago the Australian Bureau of Statistics predicted 28 million by 2050 and more recently Kevin Rudd has mentioned a figure of 35 million. Media reports in the last few days have put the figure at more like 40 million by 2050. Any advance on 40 million?

So where are these figures coming from? Many experts agree that the current focus on growing Australia’s population to 35 million or more by 2050 is not founded on sound science but on short term trends with a large dash of wishful thinking.

Continue reading "It’s time we had an actual discussion about population" »