Sustainability
City limits: How big will China's megacities get?
Chinese urbanisation will be a globally consequential trend in the 21st century. The path policymakers follow is of profound importance.
A noisy debate about city planning has…
Oil drops 50%, world shrugs
What does the fall in the price of oil do for global economic growth?
If the price of oil had swiftly risen by 50%, economic commentators would be calling this an economic…
Lima climate conference: Slow movement on Planet UNFCCC
As haggard negotiators left the UN climate change conference in Lima in the early hours of Sunday morning, many observers noted the contrast between the political acrimony that…
China's coal addiction
A recent paper in Nature says that 'no other country is investing so much money or generating so much renewable energy' as China. 'Its build-up of renewable energy systems at…
UN Climate Change Summit: A chance for Australia's environmental diplomacy
The UN Climate Change Summit is taking place in New York tomorrow, with attendance by several world leaders including US President Barack Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron…
The environment and the news cycle
I loved this bit from US environmental activist Bill McKibben, who is guest blogging on Andrew Sullivan's site:
Every day there’s something more immediately important happening…
A breakthrough in Chinese climate policy? Not likely
I argued back in April that China's 'synthetic natural gas' (syngas or SNG, which is gas made from coal) is 'bad economics, bad science and an environmental catastrophe'. I also…
Just how expensive is renewable energy?
I raised this topic recently when The Economist pointed to a new Brookings study which argued that the cost of renewables had been severely underestimated. There was some…
From the comments thread: Green energy
Two reader comments I'd like to flag in response to my piece highlighting new research by the Brookings Institution's Charles Frank, written up in The Economist, which suggests…
Green power still too expensive
This piece from The Economist would have been useful context for the green-energy puff piece broadcast on the ABC's flagship current affairs show Four Corners on 7 July.
The…