Climate change
The world sees the climate crisis in Australia’s floods. Do we?
In the late 1980s, while I was a reporter covering one of the mega-cyclones to hit Bangladesh, a government official in Dhaka confided in me that he was fed up with seeing his…
The greening of Bill Gates
Book review: Bill Gates How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (Penguin 2021)
One of the more significant aspects of Bill Gates’ How to Avoid a Climate Disaster is the simple…
Australia’s place in a decarbonising world economy
A welcome change is underway in the international effort to combat dangerous global warming. It will have big implications for the Australian economy.
The United States, European…
Book review: The Ministry for the Future
Book review: Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future (Hachette, 2020)
The Ministry for the Future is a novel set in the near future which describes the disastrous…
Climate change, a constant battle
2020 had a whole lot up its sleeve. When the year started, there was one big, burning issue in Australia: the bushfires ripping through swaths of countryside, torching towns and…
The case for going all-in on renewables
Current perceptions of renewables have been driven by the need to address climate change, a narrow view that overlooks benefits such as reducing our reliance on imported energy…
Biden’s clean energy plan versus China’s green tech dominance
A man who has earned a reputation for compromise and dealmaking over his half-century in Washington, Joe Biden has also won the presidency by presenting himself as a national…
China: World’s biggest polluter ... and climate activist?
At a speech before the UN General Assembly on 22 September, China’s President Xi Jinping made the world’s single largest climate commitment to date by stating that China would…
Preparing for when climate change drives people from their homes
While the Pacific has pulled off a miracle by remaining largely Covid-19–free, the economic devastation in the pandemic’s wake is wreaking havoc across the region. Economies are…
Duelling diplomacy over Southeast Asia’s most important river
The Mekong, Southeast Asia’s most important river, has for millennia supported the rise and fall of empires and is responsible for the livelihood of over 65 million…