The federal government’s Direct Action climate policy, a A$2.5 billion scheme aimed at paying polluters to cut their greenhouse emissions, is set to be approved in the Senate after a deal between environment…
You’ve changed your lightbulbs, you recycle, you’ve retrofitted your house, cycle when you can, and drive an electric car when you can’t. You’re doing your bit to reduce your carbon emissions and prevent…
Before the 2013 election, Tony Abbott gave us fair warning that he would turn the clock back on the environment. As promised, his government has devoted itself to short-term economics and the sort of hardline…
Climate policy is back on the agenda in Canberra this week, with the focus on the government’s centrepiece Direct Action plan. The Coalition will have to negotiate with the Palmer United Party, which will…
The Coalition government has recently axed Australia’s carbon “tax”, leaving us with no carbon price. Alternatives include the government’s “Direct Action” plan, or Clive Palmer’s proposed emissions trading…
Ross Garnaut was the architect of the Labor government’s carbon pricing scheme, which looks likely to be scrapped this week despite last week’s brinkmanship in the Senate. The Conversation asked Professor…
The chief executive of the left-leaning Australia Institute think tank, Richard Denniss, has urged Labor to do a deal to implement elements of the government’s controversial direct action climate program…
Now that Clive Palmer has declared the government’s “direct action” plan a “waste of money”, is it dead? That would leave Australia without even a fig leaf of a carbon policy to reach its emissions-cut…
Budgets are often framed as give and take. But in the case of the environment, the government is taking large amounts of money in cuts, while giving little back beyond funding the Direct Action climate…
The long-awaited White Paper on the A$2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund answers some questions about how the Abbott government’s Direct Action climate plan will work. But it looks like the policy will…
While the latest IPCC report on mitigation doesn’t recommend any particular strategy for reducing carbon emissions, it suggests changing energy consumption is a key mitigation strategy. According to the…
Nine years ago, I spent long days inside Downing Street working with the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair on how to position his government on the global climate problem. Blair was keen to work out…
There’s been a lot of international focus on Western Australia in recent weeks. The search for the lost Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 is being led from Perth. But it also turns out that Western Australia…
A Labor-dominated Senate committee has set the stage for the post-July tussle over carbon policy, recommending that Australia commit to much deeper emissions cuts than the current 5% target, and advising…
The federal government has begun the process of unwinding the carbon price, moving to cancel further auctions of carbon permits, ahead of its hoped-for repeal of all carbon-pricing legislation after the…
The Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF), the central pillar of Australia’s Direct Action climate policy, continues to attract a fair bit of derision with its credibility said to be “hanging by a thread”. Is…
Australia has a problem with its power system that goes to the core of many issues we’re facing at the moment — increasing coal and gas prices, changing electricity usage, and climate change. That’s the…
For every opposition, the prospect of taking office – attaining politics’ ultimate prize, often after years of hard grind – can be relied upon to drown out the little noises of self-doubt and self-criticism…
Associate Professor of Environmental Economics and Policy, School of Environment, Science and Engineering, and Fellow of the Marine Ecology Research Centre, Southern Cross University