October 6, 2011 – 11:36 am
Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus write: As two Americans watching from the sidelines as Australia tears itself apart over a carbon tax, it is impossible not to be reminded of our own country’s self-destructive battle over cap and trade in 2009 and 2010. And little wonder why: the Left and Right partiesin Australia have adopted [...]
February 7, 2011 – 5:15 pm
Crikey intern Sophie Cousins writes: Drilling for coal seam gas (CSG) is thriving along Australia’s east coast amid community backlash over the risks involved with the industry. The Greens have called for a moratorium on mining activities throughout NSW until an independent investigation is conducted, but Greens MP David Shoebridge told Crikey that the closure of [...]
November 9, 2010 – 9:49 pm
I confess to being a little taken aback by the swing back towards campaigning for immediate adoption of a cap-and-trade emissions scheme that appears to be gaining ground in sections of the environment movement. This, in my opinion, is a misguided strategy that risks stifling progress at a critical moment instead of opening the space [...]
August 23, 2010 – 1:55 am
When Kevin Rudd won the 2007 election in a landslide, it was heralded as the world’s first climate change election. Three years later, having squandered their mandate, the ALP went to Saturday’s election having tried to bury the issue. With little clear difference between the offerings of the two major parties, and neither pushing their [...]
January 27, 2010 – 10:12 am
The Greens’ climate policies, from our proposed CPRS amendments to our Safe Climate Bill, have been widely lauded as being the most economically sensible and scientifically literate of all the parties’. But Mungo MacCallum wouldn’t let that reality get in the way of a good pro-ALP story. Perhaps the most egregious error in Monday’s diatribe [...]
October 13, 2009 – 11:10 am
So, what is the goal of legislative climate action? Is it about trading emissions permits? Is it about technology policy? Surely it’s not about arguing over who can support polluters more! Is it even about reducing emissions, then? While you can mount arguments for all of these, fundamentally, in my opinion, the goal is none [...]
September 4, 2009 – 12:16 pm
There’s a lot of burn-out in the climate movement right now. A lot of tired people, a lot of grumpy people. I know – I am one! I can completely understand why – we’ve had a year of not only hard campaigning, but also a particularly distressing one. Dashed hopes aren’t easy to bear, a [...]
The Senate today passed a Greens motion demanding that the Government require Treasury to model the 40% cuts below 1990 levels that we know are necessary. But, within an hour, Minister Wong had thumbed her nose at the Senate and the planet, telling CE Daily that the Government “had already undertaken the largest economic modelling [...]
In recent weeks, there has been a welcome shift in focus in the Australian climate politics debate onto the global stage. It goes without saying that, unless the world moves decisively as a community of nations, we have not a snowball’s chance in hell of avoiding climate catastrophe. But the mainstream Australian discussion of the [...]
After he embarrassed her government last week by saying the CPRS may be so bad that it should be taken out the back and shot (well, not quite),it seems that Minister Wong has excised Professor Garnaut entirely from her vocabulary. In a speech to the Lowy Institute today (not yet on her website, but will [...]
