Communicator | Online Strategist | Considered Opinions
When the new carbon price policy was announced, I was fairly skeptical about it – especially given the failure of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Media reporting suggested that there were serious deficiencies in the policy, as many or more as the CPRS. However, I’ve taken the time to acquaint myself more closely with the [...]
Over at Grist, there is a report that confirms (yet again, as if more proof was needed) that investment in clean-tech is three times more effective than government spending on oil and gas jobs. Cleantech generates 17 jobs for every $1 million spent on it, compared to just 5 for every $1 million we throw [...]
I came across Bill McKibben’s opinion piece in the Washington Post and an associated video of the piece, narrated by Stephen Thomson that are well worth looking at. McKibben (of 350.org fame) takes on the current reluctance of climate activists and action advocates to link specific extreme weather events (floods in QLD, Pakistan and the [...]
I read recently that the Japanese nuclear crisis at Fukushima continues. Amazingly, if you read newspapers in Australia on a daily basis (as I do) you probably wouldn’t know it. Thankfully, The Guardian has a report on the latest on crisis – and the scary news that authorities may have tried to hide the fact [...]
Like many of my readers, I am concerned at the turn the public debate has taken on carbon pricing – lead principally by climate-denier Tony Abbott, rent-seeking big polluters and an ignorant and conflict-obsessed media pack. There are already hundreds of good quality guides to climate messaging (and little of the advice in them is [...]
I know almost nothing about 1Sky, but I do know that 350.org is one of the more successful new climate action global organisations that sprung up in the lead up to Copenhagen in 2009. 1Sky looks to be a similar organisation – entirely US-based – the coordinates public action focused on climate change. Now it [...]
I heard this morning on ABC NewsRadio that the natural gas giants in Australia are pushing back on Federal Government plans to include gas in the carbon price. The negotiations over the carbon price are following the same, predictable line that the negotiations over the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme followed: the carbon lobby and various [...]
Tony Abbott has used his “direct action” plan as the counterpoint to Labor’s carbon price plan. Apart from the obvious purpose of “direct action” being Abbott’s desire to directly transfer hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds to private hands, his proposal should fail the “common sense” test. Climate change is like a fire [...]
I’ve written about why nuclear energy is not appropriate for Australia. Nuclear energy is unsafe. It turns already dangerous, stressful disasters into atomic catastrophes. We are now learning just how catastrophic. Food exports could be halted from areas near the Fukishima nuclear plant if tests find further contamination. The tainted milk was found 30km from [...]
Last week’s Crikey had an article by former Australian Institude head-honcho Clive Hamilton, arguing that Australia needs “a new brand of environmental radicalism”. Hamilton writes: After a high-pressure meeting in Canberra, in which the government dangled the carrot of a 25% cut in Australia’s emissions, the Southern Cross Climate Coalition — comprising the ACF, WWF, [...]
The climate denialists in the Coalition has a simple message about the carbon price: It’s a tax. Taxes raise prices. Prices on electricity, fuel and other things therefore will go up. What about the alternative? The problem for progressives is that our arguments are nuanced. We don’t necessarily see the world in Manichean absolutes, black [...]
Hopefully your family doesn’t have a climate denialist uncle or relative, but if it does, and you’re stuck sitting next to him (or her, if she’s an aunt) at Xmas Lunch, here’s some excellent graphs that you can use to help debunk his (or her) climate denialism (courtesy of NASA). There are some other really [...]
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