Rarely have politicians demonstrated their ignorance of the real risks and opportunities confronting Australia than with the recent utterances of Barnaby Joyce, Matt Canavan and other ministers promoting development of Adani and Galilee Basin coal generally, along with their petulant foot-stamping over Westpac’s decision to restrict funding to new coal…
Submission to the Review of Climate Change Policies 2017
Contents: Preamble The Key Issue – Existential Risk The Rapidly Changing Context of Global Climate Change Practical Implications The Australian Context Existential Risk Management Reframing Australia’s Climate Change & Energy Policies Author: Ian Dunlop Ian Dunlop has wide experience in energy resources, infrastructure, and international business, for many years…
Submission to the Finkel Review of the National Energy Market
Contents: Preamble The Key Issue – Existential Risk The Rapidly Changing Context of Global Climate Change Practical Implications The Australian Context Existential Risk Management Request to Expert Panel Preamble Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Preliminary Report into the Future Security of the National Energy Market. …
Energy Security from Clean Coal, CCS & CSG – What could possibly go wrong ?
Every few years the fossil fuel industry pressures politicians to force “clean coal”, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and more recently coal seam gas (CSG) on an increasingly sceptical community to justify their continued expansion. This cycle started with promotion of Adani’s massive Carmichael coal mine in Queensland, for coal…
Stop Spreading Disinformation on Coal Demand
In their book Climate Change, Capitalism and Corporations, published prior to the Paris climate change meeting last December, Chris Wright and Daniel Nyberg highlighted how the dominance of neoliberalism in recent decades has locked the global economy on to a path of “creative self-destruction”, built around the oxymoron of “green…
Coal Industry – Wrong Way, Go Back!
Coal producers and lobbyists are yet again promoting “clean coal” as the justification for continued expansion of energy coal as we make the inevitable transition to the low-carbon economy. Conscious that they can no longer credibly reject the evidence of accelerating climate change, the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) and…
Coal – The Captain’s Call & It’s Catastrophic Implications
The last few days have demonstrated just how far out of touch the Australian media and political incumbency are from critical climate change events happening around the world. The Australian recently launched yet another tirade against supposed bias in the ABC’s handling of climate change, followed up by a stern…
The Australian Elites Have Failed Us On Climate Change
The recent utterances of Maurice Newman, Chair of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council, suggesting that climate change is nothing more than an attempt to establish “a new world order under the UN”, engendered some hilarity. They should not, because his comments highlight a fundamental failure of leadership on the…
Burning the Science Books
Didn’t work then, won’t work now Australia has an enviable reputation for scientific research, extending long before the hey-day of the CSIRO in the 1950s under the visionary leadership of Sir Robert Menzies and Sir Ian Clunies-Ross. On the hottest and driest continent on Earth, our prosperity would be non-existent…
Economics
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From Global Drivers to Strategic Risks
Since the Industrial Revolution the world has undergone an unprecedented transformation, largely a result of human activity. To the point, as proposed by Paul Crutzen, that we are now arguably in a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene 1, where humanity is the dominant force in world evolution. The changes…