Elephants in the room, part one For all our schemes and mantras about making this or that part of our lives environmentally “sustainable”, humanity’s assault on the planet not only continues but expands…
One of the arts of politics is storytelling, establishing a narrative that people can engage with. It is why politicians often talk about great teachers when explaining education reform, cancer patients…
Australia is the only country in the Group of Twenty nations less prepared for a low carbon emissions world than it was almost two decades ago, a report has found. Since 1995, Australia’s reliance on polluting…
Greenhouse gases have increased at more than 3% a year for the past decade to reach their highest level in 800,000 years, according to the latest summary of Australia’s long term climate trends by CSIRO…
Australia’s land and oceans have continued to warm in response to rising CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. This is the headline finding in the State of the Climate 2012, an updated summary…
When thinking of the challenges we face in responding to climate change, it is time to admit that our political focus has been fairly narrow: limiting emissions and moving beyond carbon-based energy systems…
John Mathews, Macquarie Graduate School of Management
If no-one argues against the proposition that it was capitalism that created the global warming problem, then no one can argue that it must therefore be capitalism that will solve the problem. But how…
The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) is currently revising the Australian Dietary Guidelines. Yet, despite expert advice from public health and environmental sustainability groups…
Little Penguins off the coast of Perth are being found dead - starved, battered, and in some cases almost completely beheaded - as elements both natural and manmade conspire against them. Penguin Island…
Wine grapes in Australia’s south are ripening on average 20 days earlier than they did in 1985, according to a study that attributes the trend to climate change, smaller harvests and improved technology…
Why have mass extinctions of species occurred since the late Proterozoic (from 580 million years ago) and repeatedly through the Phanerozoic? Integral to these extinctions were abrupt changes in the physical…
Recent wet weather and flooding across eastern Australia has caused many to ask, wasn’t climate change supposed to cause more droughts, not floods? Critics of climate change science have suggested that…
These are painful times for those hoping to see an international consensus and substantive action on global warming. In the US, Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney said in June 2011: “The…