There is something but not much to celebrate over the safeguard compromise. It may well ensure we reduce our emissions by 43%. But the Labor government’s continued permissive attitude to new fossil fuel projects is in blatant disregard of the IPCC’s pathway to a 1.5C limit on global warming. Just how conflicted is Labor? Until Continue reading »
Enviroment
Climate change is causing more flash floods in dry areas and increasing methane emissions from wetlands. Cats continue to destroy Australian wildlife. Chicken and salmon farming pollute their local environments. Pet cats killing our wildlife Cats have driven 27 Australian native animals to extinction and currently threaten another 124 birds, reptiles, amphibians and mammals with Continue reading »
New IPCC report documents a threatening climate-present and a bleak climate-future. Alcoa failing to rehabilitate the lands it has destroyed once mining stops. Shortage of integrity not gas behind our gas problems. IPCC’s climate change synthesis report As a (lapsed) sociologist, I am well accustomed to non-sociologists scornfully saying, ‘I could have told you that Continue reading »
Trees are good for the climate and human health. Plastics are bad for the environment and bird health. Where are the good governments when you need them? Forests reduce global warming … and not just by absorbing and storing carbon. Forests also have non-carbon processes that interact with the atmosphere to influence global and local Continue reading »
Australia’s Safeguard Mechanism gets a government greenwash while international efforts to control Scope 3 emissions increase. Pygmy chameleons and eagle-owls are fighting for survival in different ways. Please stop eating shark and Tassie farmed salmon. Safeguard Mechanism If you were completely confused or disappointed (or most likely both) by the previous government’s Safeguard Mechanism and Continue reading »
We are losing trees and insects at alarming rates and Australia’s land and sea temperatures continue to rise. But does too much bad news create ‘Doom Loops’? How to lose 15 billion trees On February 23rd, David Lindenmayer, one of Australia’s many excellent ecologists who continue to highlight in the public domain the multiple threats Continue reading »
Indigenous owned forests in the Amazon absorb carbon; non-Indigenous forests produce carbon. Chicken and pig factories are bad for the animals and bad for the climate. Indigenous held forests capture more carbon The importance of natural forests as carbon sinks is well recognised – each year between 2001 and 2021 the world’s forests absorbed about Continue reading »
How best to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: stop burning coal, eat less meat or block out the sun? The first and second look preferable to the third to me. How many reports do we need? Every organisation with an interest in climate change seems to produce at least one report a year that analyses countries’ Continue reading »
All countries are failing to look after their environments and their people. Long haul flights will continue to generate most CO2. The world’s youth are not happy. Biophysical boundaries and social thresholds This piece requires familiarity with two concepts: planetary boundaries and doughnut economics. The first posits that there are nine environmental factors that must Continue reading »
Michael Keating’s response to the P&I article series on growth – GDP and population – is very welcome as it provides a condensed summary of what has befuddled Australian political economy in recent decades. Problem one is his seeming complete unfamiliarity with post-growth scholarship: the problems it identifies, the causes of the problems, and the Continue reading »