Vegans and vegetarians do less damage to the environment than meat-eaters. TotalEnergies and World Rugby team up in Paris to play a dirty game. Tips to become a better recycler. I eat, therefore I pollute The world’s food system has an enormous effect on the natural environment. It is responsible for about a third of Continue reading »
climate
Like it or not, the structure of global trade in green technologies and the raw materials required for their manufacture is being decided in an era when geopolitics trump markets, and the WTO’s credibility to check the abuse of national security exceptions is near rock bottom. The upshot, as Mari Pangestu explains in this week’s lead Continue reading »
Australian governments and mining firms are cold-bloodedly contemplating the needless deaths of 5.3 million human beings – many of them our own citizens – from climate causes resulting from new Australian fossil fuels developments. The death toll from climate impacts was highlighted in a recent paper by Canadian researchers Joshua Pearce and Richard Parncut who Continue reading »
The Albanese government is tiptoeing as if it has all the time in the world. Intergenerational reports make for great politics, but hardly ever great policy. Modern governments are bipartisan in not being big on the vision thing, long-term thinking, or even the planning thing. Reports and forecasts are good for several days of pontifications Continue reading »
The Australian Government’s public analysis of climate risk, our greatest threat, is dangerously misleading. The Intergenerational Report 2023 (IGR) is a prime example. By dumbing down the implications of climate change with simplified economic models, the IGR and similar reports are institutionalising the global failure to face climate reality. The US inquiry into the 9/11 Continue reading »
Leaders of the AUKUS nations, all once pronouncing ambition on addressing the climate crisis and lording the mantle of global leadership, are now each in turn forgoing their international commitments, carving out excuses and worse. AUKUS, the recent defence agreement between Australia, the UK and the USA, is demonstrating a surprising quirk: joint-failure to lead Continue reading »
Not enough action to preserve our forests and not enough action to prevent bushfires. Less than twelve years before we hit 1.5o of global warming. Bushfires – how many warnings do we need? The fires in Hawaii have prompted David Bowman, Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science at the University of Tasmania, to revisit the Continue reading »
The Actuaries Institute of Australia has just confirmed what many Australian households already know – home insurance is increasingly unaffordable. It found average premiums climbed 28% in the year to March, while premiums for higher-risk properties, such as those in flood-prone areas, climbed 50%. The institute also found 12% of Australian households – 1.24 million – are Continue reading »
The future is already upon us. The forty-year Intergenerational Report (IGR) is a divertissement. The population, participation, and productivity template of Treasury economists (3Ps framework) is inadequate and unsuited to the already changed world. As is the obsession with growth. How far out does it seem reasonable to project? In terms of climate, Australia is Continue reading »
Our human species is drifting rapidly towards extinction, and there is not yet in place, a process to prevent it. Three very recent books, two by Australian authors, point to the desperate situation in which humanity now finds itself. The three books are “How to Fix a Broken Planet by Canberra science writer, Julian Cribb, Continue reading »