Earlier this week, I spoke with Kellie Caught, head of climate change campaigning with WWF in Australia, about the outcomes of the conference in Durban, as well as what comes next following the package of Clean Energy and carbon pricing legislation that was passed by the Australian Parliament last month. You can listen to…
Continue reading →Barack Obama’s visit to Canberra this week has generated a lot of attention. But I was much happier being in Canberra last week for the Senate’s historic vote to pass the package of legislation that will finally start moving Australia towards a clean energy future. I partly wanted to be there as a way to bear…
Continue reading →This week I had the privilege of having Greens’ Senator Scott Ludlam in the studio for an interview. Together with my regular interlocutor, Mr Peter J Black, we spoke about the recent carbon pricing announcement, the internet filter and the NBN, and nuclear waste, nuclear power and Fukushima. You can listen to it all by clicking…
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Last Tuesday night, I was part of an election forum on climate change with the other two main candidates for the seat of Brisbane. It was quite well attended, and included media representatives from the Courier-Mail, Brisbane Times and ABC Online. It also used a question format where people wrote down their questions and then…
Continue reading →Jeff Goodell is an American who wrote a book called “Big Coal: the dirty secret behind America’s future” – there’s a good interview with him about this book on You Tube at this link. He’s written a new book called “Cooling the Planet”, which is about geo-engineering: scientists who are researching the ways we could…
Continue reading →A couple of years ago I wrote a blog post about mountaintop mining in the USA. All mining has some impact, but the sheer destructiveness of this type of mining is astonishing – and that’s before you take into account the greenhouse impact of the coal. This article in the New York Times details the…
Continue reading →For those interested in basic facts about temperature trends in Australia and globally over recent decades, there is a great post over at Lavartus Prodeo by Brian Banisch, who has been following the data and the various scientific reports on this issue for a long time. Very much worth having a read of for those…
Continue reading →It seems more and more likely that the Copenhagen Summit will fall well short of what many people had hoped for. Some hope that the arrivals of some key players like President Obama and India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh might still help bring about a positive outcome, but it is hard to see it happening….
Continue reading →Last night I attended the public forum I wrote about here, featuring Pacific Island peoples speaknig about the impacts of climate change on their homelands, health and cultures. It was very well attended and the speakers were engaging and enlightening. I’ve published a piece about it over at Crikey at this link. If for some…
Continue reading →Oxfam Australia has just http://www.oxfam.org.au/media/article.php?id=599 released a report on the impacts of climate change in the Pacific. It details impacts which are already occurring for some Islands in the Pacific region. The report’s release is timed in the lead up to the http://www.smh.com.au/environment/global-warming/pacific-islanders-cry-for-help-20090726-dxio.html upcoming meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum, being held next week in…
Continue reading →Anyone in Brisbane who believes climate change presents a serious threat which needs much stronger action than has occurred to date should consider trying to get along to a rally happening tomorrow (Saturday). It’s being held at 1pm in the city at Queens Park (corner of George & Elizabeth Sts. It’s billed as a National…
Continue reading →The federal government has announced its greenhouse gas emissions target for 2020 of a 5 to 15 per cent reduction on what emission levels were in 2000. The full details are here. There are lots of figures scattered, which can all feel like a bit of a blur after a while. But the simple fact is that…
Continue reading →I’ve got another speaking engagement coming up next week in Sydney. On Wednesday 26th November, at Customs House in Sydney I’ll be part of a panel at a forum discussing actions on climate change. It’s organised by the Centre for Policy Development. It is one of their ‘Common Ground’ forums – a concept seeks to…
Continue reading →The Courier-Mail’s Environment Blog gave a mention to the event I’m speaking at this Saturday. As I wrote last week, it’s from 11am at Reddacliff Place at the top of Queen St Mall – one of a number of similar events being held around the country to promote the environmental benefits of vegetarian and vegan…
Continue reading →Next week is National Vegetarian Week, so be prepared for a larger than usual number of examples of people seeking to inform you of the environmental, health and ethical arguments in favour of eating less meat. As I mentioned around the time of Earth Hour, going without meat for a week has far greater greenhouse…
Continue reading →Those who say they accept the general consensus about the threat of rapid and serious climate change but pretend we can prevent it without major and rapid changes to our lifestyle are the real climate change deniers. Even though I strongly disagree with those who genuinely believe that climate change is either not real or…
Continue reading →There is heaps around the blogs giving some detailed analysis of the government’s greenhouse green paper, (which doesn’t seem very green at all to me). I’ve put a bunch of links at the end of this post. Given the seriousness and urgency of the threat, I’d rather a focus purely on the policy assessments of…
Continue reading →A new report from the Climate Institute suggests there are big savings Australia can make in improving energy efficiency. While pricing carbon will no doubt help encourage improvements in this area, its another reminder that we need to drive concerted behavioural change, rather than just rely on market forces. The report suggests “there are major opportunities…
Continue reading →The huge crowds that attended each of the public forums held by Professor Ross Garnaut after the recent release of his draft report were quite astonishing, but also very reassuring. I went along to the Brisbane meeting last Friday. It was held in the main auditorium in City Hall. It seats over 1000 people and was pretty…
Continue reading →A strong sign of the high level of public interest in climate change and carbon trading is the fact that all the public forums held by Ross Garnaut this week following the release of his report have been full. I am hoping to get to the one in Brisbane tomorrow. There’s been ample commentary about the…
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