Michael Mazengarb Posted 10 March 2020 Federal Labor’s renewed commitment to a net zero emissions target has ignited a new front in climate wars that have plagued Australian politics for more than a decade – but it has shown that the Morrison government now stands alone in opposing progress towards the decarbonisation of the Australian […]
Tony Wood Posted 10 March 2020 Opposition leader Anthony Albanese sought to claim the climate policy high ground last week with his commitment to a net-zero emissions target by 2050. But figures on Australia’s emissions from the Department of the Environment and Energy help frame the political debate, and put the policies of both Labor […]
Reviewed by Augustine Doronila Posted 10 March 2020 Up to 700 million people could be obliged to leave their homelands during the next three decades because of increasing desertification in the landscapes where they live. In the opinion of many scientists, there is only one hope: to convince local farmers of ‘sustainable land management’. The […]
30 January 2020 It’s when prime minister Scott Morrison thinks he’s being really clever that he reveals the true level of his ignorance. Remember how pleased Morrison was with himself when he brought in that lump of coal to parliament, thoughtfully provided (and lacquered) by the principal coal lobby, whose top two executives now serve […]
Four years ago, in December 2015, every member of the United Nations met in Paris and agreed to hold global temperature increases to 2°C, and as close as possible to 1.5°C. The bad news is that, four years on, the best we can hope for is holding global increases to around 1.75°C. We can only […]
Will Steffen Australian National University Those who say “I told you so” are rarely welcomed, yet I am going to say it here. Australian scientists warned the country could face a climate change-driven bushfire crisis by 2020. It arrived on schedule. For several decades, the world’s scientific community has periodically assessed climate science, including the […]
6 February 2020. Pope Francis warned of the dangers of ‘catastrophic’ weather events, like savage fires resulting from climate change, in his 2015 document, Laudato Si’. He still refers to it constantly and gives copies to his visitors. It is the most authoritative of his writings, and has been widely acclaimed by experts in many […]
6 February 2020. Australians have been deeply shocked by the intensity and extent of the bushfires and other extreme weather events. Millions of people have been directly affected, especially along the east coast where fires were burning from September in Queensland, and by New Year’s Day extended down to the horrific fire storm at Mallacoota. […]
Tim Colebatch. Posted 28 November 2019. Bringing down global emissions will require a ‘laser-like focus’. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that energy policy is way off course around the world. At the Paris climate conference, governments committed to reducing emissions to try to hold the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees. Four […]
Rowan Ireland. Posted 28 November 2019. This year, several international crises in the Amazon have come to the boil, just as planning and preliminary jousting led up to the Amazon Synod of Catholic Bishops, which concluded in Rome on 27 October. The three Amazon crises: the ecological, the human, and the political. The ecological crisis, […]
