Realisation is dawning that the climate and environmental crises will not be solved by current national policies. The reason is that the current market economy based on everlasting growth is the prime cause of these crises. At COP15 the UN Biodiversity Conference UN Secretary General António Guterres commenced the conference by noting “With our bottomless Continue reading »
climate
Australia’s oceans, Greenland’s Ice Sheet and Antarctica’s sea ice are all feeling the heat. One million species are on the edge of extinction. No wonder life scientists are taking to the streets. Australia is in hot water Although the global warming that has occurred over the oceans is lower than the warming over land, about Continue reading »
There was a time when leaders fell on their sword when they were defeated in battle or lost their core beliefs, nowadays most do not even resign their privileged positions to resist the existential danger posed to advanced life, including human civilisation. It is long past time to declare a global climate and nuclear emergency. Continue reading »
While I was on holiday, I noticed a tweet that left me in no doubt about the subject of my first column back. It said: “I genuinely think the next generation will not forgive us for what we have done to them and the world they will have to live in.” I, too, fear they Continue reading »
Scientific research shows that the environmental impacts of human civilisation have exceeded several planetary boundaries. To avoid societal collapse and to assist the transition to an ecologically sustainable civilisation, we must transition to a steady-state economy. Like Roger Beale, Michael Keating is reluctant to accept the scientific assessments of the threat to civilisation. Keating restates Continue reading »
Recently, I had a catch-up conversation on climate change and November’s UN climate change conference (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheikh with one of Hong Kong’s most conscientious students of the subject. As we began to wind up, I asked what we should be taking away from the UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal – confusingly called COP15 – Continue reading »
… as Louis Armstrong famously croaked. Well, perhaps: The temperature’s going up. The rich are getting richer. Wetlands are disappearing. Gas is officially green. 2022 sixth hottest on record It’s hard not to keep telling the same old stories but keeping an eye on the global temperature is rather like keeping an eye on your Continue reading »
Tell it like it is, António: ‘climate disaster, death sentence, insanity, inconsistent with human survival’. Thank goodness for chocolate and birds. Was any progress made at the last COP meeting in Egypt? Were there game-changing, climate-action breakthroughs or was it simply more talk culminating in yet another failure (Greta Thunberg’s ‘Blah, blah, blah’)? Tom Athanasiou, Continue reading »
Richard Barnes laments the wilful blindness of many elites who go snow skiing while turning a blind eye to the causes of the high country’s dying landscape. Barnes says he mostly agrees with author Jeff Sparrow that the current economic system is to blame. Let me count the ways. This list of the top-10 errors Continue reading »
One can only hope that the day is not too far away when “I was only doing my job” will be no more a defence against climate crimes than it is against war crimes. Climate change has come to the Australian Alps, where the snow is failing and the snow gums are dying. But the Continue reading »