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The Narrabri ‘Big Picture’ event in November 2015 brought together people from across the region in opposition to coal seam gas extraction..
Selen Ercan
While anger mobilises opposition to coal seam gas projects, it is also joy, especially the joy of social connection, that helps to sustain involvement.
As a crusader for coal, Tony Abbott is an undisputed champion of the emotional logic of ‘truthiness’.
Dan Peled/AAP
There are telltale signs when regard for the facts of the matter is sacrificed to ‘truthiness’ to win a political debate.
So large are the nation’s daily greenhouse gas emissions that if yours is a typical Australian lifestyle you’re contributing disproportionately to climate change.
Carbon Visuals/flickr
It would take a lifestyle upheaval to drop most Australians’ household emissions to a sustainable level. Even many of us who urge equitable action on climate change act as if this doesn’t apply to us.
When Tony Abbott went too far in his advocacy for the coal industry, his government faced a public backlash.
Dan Peled/AAP
The undermining of environmental science, and the creation of lies and bribes to distort public policymaking, is as old as industries that know their products do harm, but lie to keep them in use.
Critics fear the merger of agricultural giants Bayer and Monsanto will drive an increase in use of pesticides.
AgriLife Today/flickr
Over-cooked forecasts for demand have justified excessive spending and higher prices. This is precisely what the gas cartel wants: the spectre of shortages whipping up prices.
Could a randomly selected tree make a better president than Donald Trump?
Bruce Irschick/flickr
If people are starting to look much worse in democratic terms, trees are starting to look much better. We are learning that plants engage in meaningful and, more to the point, truthful communication.
In the era of wearable technology, we live as devices of our own devices.
flickr/Keoni Cabral
To be good global citizens, we must stop churning through energy-hungry devices. Earth cannot cope with the burdens, including mountains of e-waste, that electronic consumerism creates.
Outgoing Greenpeace executive director Kumi Naidoo sees the struggles against political repression, poverty and climate change as intrinsically interconnected.
flickr/World Economic Forum
The global food production system is inherently undemocratic. Based on shared experiences of the adverse effects, the world’s citizens need to intervene as democratic publics to transform a broken system.
At one climate change conference after another, leaders of the developed democracies solemnly pledge action, then return to the gridlock of political systems with 19th-century origins.
EPA/COP20
Even as the challenges of climate change grow ever more obvious, what remains largely unacknowledged is the crisis in liberal democratic politics that is preventing an effective response.
In the Anthropocene, human-driven forces are shaping the planet in ways that may risk the collapse of human civilisation.
Damián Bakarcic/flickr
The Anthropocene, as an epoch of human-driven planetary change, poses huge environmental and political problems. But it could also force us to develop proper ecological and democratic accountability.
Former Liberal leader John Hewson, Australian Youth climate Coalition co-director Lucy Mann and the Climate Institute’s chief executive John Connor greet a dinosaur outside Parliament House.
AAP/Katina Curtis
Australians are deeply cynical about both sides’ approach to climate change but especially mistrust Tony Abbott’s attitude, according to polling released by the Climate Institute on the eve of the reintroduction…
It’s 100 million years since Pangea, and we’re still waiting.
cleanbiz.asia/Cesar Herada
It seems an anomaly that among the 15 autonomous, specialised agencies within the United Nations – such as the FAO, WMO, WHO, or UNESCO – there is no dedicated environmental organisation. This secondary…
The 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill was a tragedy, but what legacy has it left?
AAP/Bevil Knapp.
It is now two and a half years since the Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico. Both the people and the ecosystem of the Gulf were changed by this massive spill; how well…
South Australia’s wind energy per capita is higher than any major country in the world, the report said.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/twicepix/
Energy production must shift from fossil fuels to renewable sources within four decades to avoid the most damaging consequences of climate change, a government report has found. The Climate Commission’s…
Dear reader, don’t let yourselves be fooled: whatever political charlatans, cynics or melancholics say to the contrary, democracy as we know it is turning green. There’s never been a period in the history…
(Former) Research Fellow, Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra