The first priority of any government should be to safeguard the people it serves and provide for their future well-being, their safety and security. In recent times, national security discussions in Australia have been focused almost exclusively on issues such as terrorism, migration, cyber and energy security, and largely in…
Category: Leadership
Climate Change – will the financial system survive?
One of the few bright spots in an otherwise dismal global response to the escalating climate crisis has been the preparedness of financial market regulators to force their regulated institutions to face up to the implications of climate risk. In so doing, they have been acutely aware of the lessons…
The Net Zero Emission Illusion
As the need for serious action to prevent runaway global warming becomes critical, it is not surprising that efforts from the denialist lobby to prevent that action intensify, albeit in more subtle form than the blanket refusal of yesteryear to even accept that a climate problem existed. Around the world,…
Earth Day 2021: Australia falls further out of line with the world
It is entirely appropriate that President Biden launches his global climate summit on Earth Day 2021. Earth Day began in the US in 1970, triggered by massive pollution across the country, and the need to fundamentally change concepts of industrial development if society was to prosper, rapidly leading by the…
Have we a government fit for purpose, or the greatest danger to our national security?
The current bushfires are unprecedented in terms of their extent, intensity, fire season length, economic and social impact. They are, without doubt, intensified by human-induced climate change. However, they are not unexpected; this is what the climate science has been telling us for years. Likewise with the drought. The fact…
A call to the Australian people – demand serious action on climate change before it is too late.
After three decades of inaction, human-induced climate change is the greatest threat, and opportunity, facing this country, far outweighing the issues dominating our domestic political discourse, such as the US/China impasse, a faltering economy and religious freedom. The world faces the same threat. Climate change now represents an existential challenge which, if not addressed as a genuine emergency immediately, will destroy human civilisation as we know it within decades. Immediate, in that the actions we take today, particularly expanding fossil fuel use thereby increasing global carbon emissions, are locking-in that outcome.
A local mayor can see we face a climate emergency. Why can’t the PM?
Despite soaring rhetoric about Australian values and the absolute priority of securing the future of the Australian people, it is crystal clear that the Federal Government, the Opposition and much of our corporate and media leadership have absolutely no understanding of the greatest threat facing this country, namely human-induced climate…
A Parliament Without Trust or Legitimacy Must Go
The insults hurled by David Leyonhjelm at Sarah Hanson-Young recently put parliamentary discourse in the gutter. Leyonhjelm was roundly condemned, but not by our leaders. A limp rap across the knuckles from Turnbull and Shorten, then on to more pressing matters, hoping it will all go away. But not so…
Climate Risk – MCA Directors Breach Duties of Care and Due Diligence
After 30 years of inaction, the focus on climate risk is accelerating as the physical impact of climate change worsens and the transition risks to a low-carbon world intensify. Despite effusive official rhetoric, nothing has been done to seriously address climate change, notwithstanding increasingly urgent warnings . Global climate-related losses…
Facing Reality: Reframing Climate Change as an Immediate Existential Risk
The Big Question: “Who at the highest levels of leadership in corporates and public service will take the bold risks that are required, not gradually or incrementally, but decisively in line with the new scale and speed that ‘unthinkables’ emerge.” ITD – Climate Change Emergency Response Rationale June 2018