The impressive US Congressional Research Service (CRS) has just released another batch of independent analyses of the daunting challenges the Pentagon – especially the US Navy – face in meeting the demands to upgrade significantly its force capabilities in the Indo Pacific. All of which is now confronted by the extraordinarily chaotic legislative environment occasioned Continue reading »
Economy
Australian authorities conducted three separate internal studies in the past eight years to determine whether the commodity-exporting nation could completely diversify its supply chains from China – but all said the task was impossible, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter. Separate administrations conducted investigations into the feasibility of ‘diversifying’ import-export relationship, all Continue reading »
Things did not go so well this time around. When the worn Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy turned up banging on the doors of Washington’s powerful on September 21, he found fewer open hearts and an increasingly large number of closed wallets. The old ogre of national self-interest seemed to be presiding and was in no Continue reading »
‘It is no longer possible to doubt the human origin of climate change’ (Pope Francis). Popes in the past usually quoted ancient theologians, or themselves, as footnote authorities in official documents. So, you know something’s changed when a pope’s footnotes quote the IPCC, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or the UN Climate Change 2023 Continue reading »
Pumped hydro storage is the ideal complement to wind and solar electricity generation: versatile, modest in scale, cost and build-time, little environmental disruption, mature component technologies, few toxic chemicals, durable. Yet it is consistently overlooked in mainstream discussion in favour of gas-fired power stations, batteries and the nuclear zombie. It is also shackled by out-of-date Continue reading »
The world recently saw the hottest day in 120 thousand years, mainly driven by climate change arising from our addiction to fossil fuels – sustaining economic growth and maintaining our lifestyles. We are consuming more oil than ever before in human history – enough to fill 6,500 Olympic swimming pools every day. The impact of extreme weather is one Continue reading »
Business is always telling governments, and the rest of us, that Australia would perform much better if we and our rulers took their advice. There would be fewer and lower taxes while ‘flexible’ freewheeling industrial relations policies and much less regulation are all common claims about how Australia could be improved. While all these assertions Continue reading »
Bad-tempered coverage of China continues to flourish across the entire US media. It ranges from fire-breathing to pearl-clutching. Most commentators look daggers at Beijing in a dozen different over-cooked ways – and especially at the Communist Party of China – while reminding readers and viewers of America’s continuing paramount superpower status. What is relatively new, Continue reading »
America is falling into a trap. It thinks the future will be decided by military dominance, despite losing one war after another. China, on the other hand, recognises that the future will be decided by economics. Pearls and Irritations has posted an outstanding series of articles by Percy Allan on the so called ‘China Threat‘. Continue reading »
An opinion piece (‘Degrowth approach is disastrous’, Canberra Times, 9 September, p.38) by authors from the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) attacked the concept of degrowth to a steady-state economy (SSE) and defended the notion of continuing economic growth on a finite planet. The Canberra Times did not publish the opinion piece I submitted in Continue reading »