It’s Wednesday and I have comments on a few items today. I haven’t been able to write much today because the power has been down after the dramatic storms yesterday in Victoria damaged the network and caused absolute chaos (see below). Power is mostly back on now (which is why this post is later than…
Climate Change
It was interesting to spend a few weeks in London recently and catch up with friends and research colleagues. It always focuses the mind on issues when one is in situ rather than gazing at data and reports from afar. My view of British Labour as being incapable of providing the British people with a…
I read an interesting report in the last few days – The Economics of the Food System Transformation – published on January 29, 2024 by the – Food Systems Economics Commission (FSEC) – which “is a joint initiative that brings together 21 commissioners from 19 global institutions”. The topic is very relevant to research I…
Several serving MPs work for oil and gas firms, while many more accept gifts or take jobs for big-polluting sectors after leaving Parliament
I often make the point in talks that the fictional world that mainstream economists promote leads to poor decisions in the real world by our policy makers. We saw that in the 1980s and 1990s with the large scale privatisations of public enterprises, touted as employment-enriching, productivity-boosting strategies to provide ‘more money for government to…
The UN's spokesman on 'climate defenders' hit out at the Conservatives' suite of anti-protest laws - and media rhetoric against green activists.
Despite the overwhelming evidence that serious action is urgently needed to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis, 2023’s UN climate summit COP28 provided nothing in the way of solutions.
The post World leaders at COP28 still on course for climate catastrophe first appeared on Solidarity Online.
As Chancellor, Rishi Sunak reduced the budget for flood protection
For the time being I will continue my Wednesday format where I cover some things that crossed my mind in the last week but which I don’t provide detailed analysis. The items can be totally orthogonal. The latest inflation data for Australia continues to affirm the transitory narrative – dropping significantly over the last month.…
Ollie Newham, of the Rewilding Britain charity, argues that a more focused approach is vital to delivering nature's recovery in the UK's national parks