Chris Barrie Australian National University. This is part of a new series looking at the national security challenges facing Australia, how our leaders are responding to them through legislation, and how these measures are impacting society. Read the rest of the series here. It is evident from Australia’s increasingly severe droughts and record-breaking heatwaves that […]
Jeremy Smith. While local drought-affected communities are declaring a climate emergency, present proposals to mitigate the impacts of drought fail to address the real crisis. They do not recognise that this drought is not just another variation on ‘normal’ conditions, but a step towards a new climate. Radical and comprehensive planning and action are required. […]
Bill Hare Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. This piece is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story. It is almost five years since the landmark Paris deal was struck. Nearly 200 countries agreed to work towards limiting global warming to […]
Giles Parkinson. 29 April 2019 Leading economist and climate change policy expert, Professor Ross Garnaut, says Australia could be powered 100 per cent by ‘intermittent’ renewables by the early 2030s, and have a grid that is more reliable, secure, and cost-effective than it is now. In the third of a series of six public lectures […]
Richard Trethowan University of Sydney. A UN report released last month found a quarter of the world’s carbon emissions come from the food chain, particularly meat farming. This has prompted calls to reduce emissions from agriculture and to feed the world on plant protein. UN climate change report: land clearing and farming contribute a third […]
Kate Dooley University of Melbourne.Brendan Mackey Griffith University. A special report on how land use affects climate change was released in August by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Land degradation, deforestation, and the expansion of our deserts, along with agriculture and the other ways people shape land, are all major contributors to global climate […]
Bruce Duncan. The extraordinary fires in the Amazon in August 2019 struck dread into the hearts of climate specialists and observers worldwide, since the Amazon forests remain one of the great bulwarks against global warming. They cool Latin America, and generate 20% of the world’s oxygen. Smoke from the fires darkened the sky over Sao […]
Neville Nicholls Monash University. This month, the world has been celebrating the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the Moon. But this week sees another scientific anniversary, perhaps just as important for the future of civilisation. Forty years ago, a group of climate scientists sat down at Woods Hole in Massachusetts for the […]
Andrew Glikson. History testifies to powerful rulers’ aspirations to the position of gods, including the Pharaohs and Roman Emperors such as Caligula or Nero. Nowadays, such rulers are mimicked by billionaires and their followers, including some scientists, with false messianic prophecies in public and the media of ‘intergalactic civilisation’. Included are predictions of making life interplanetary by […]
While the Morrison government dithers, climate specialists are alarmed that the chances to limit global warming are slipping away, with the likely result that we will be left facing truly catastrophic changes to the weather. The former Liberal leader, John Hewson, in the Fairfax media on 1 August, castigated the Morrison government for ignoring the […]
