How do we prepare for life on a hot planet?
There has always been a sense of unreality about our climate change predicament, especially through the long years of denial, disputation and delay. More recently, Australia seems to have jumped from the delusions of denial to faith in increasingly implausible”solutions”, bypassing sober assessment of the seriousness of the reality we confront. It should be obvious […]
‘Neo-nature’ and the new world of the Anthropocene
Do you, like me, hesitate when you refer to floods or bushfires as natural disasters? When Earth’s atmosphere is warmer and moister because of human-induced climate change, all weather events have a human fingerprint. The now well-developed field of ‘attribution studies’ calculates the increased likelihood and severity of extreme weather events as a result of […]
It’s just not cricket: rich kids win at the expense of everyone else
The opening on Friday of Radford College’s multi-million dollar cricket facility—described as ‘better than Lords’—draws attention to the fundamental unfairness of our education system. Elite private schools are engaged in a kind of arms race to build the most lavish facilities for their already privileged pupils, which not only highlights the growing gap with public […]
Australia will not come close to net zero by 2050 under Coalition’s nuclear plan
George Wilkenfeld and Clive Hamilton The Coalition has announced that it plans to commission seven nuclear power stations by 2050. It has said it would abandon the government’s 2030 target of reducing the nation’s emissions by 43 per cent (compared with 2005 levels). It has also restated its commitment to the ‘net zero by 2050’ objective declaring […]
Elite privilege isn’t a product of wealth Class shame is woven into the fabric of society
Almost a year ago, in July 2023, Rishi Sunak’s government named and shamed Britain’s most unruly towns. The media, unsurprisingly, lapped it up: places subjected to higher levels of social disadvantage were described as “bad towns” filled with “streets of shame”. All who lived there were tainted. We rarely think about what it means to […]
Magic thinking vs the hard truth of climate change
Clive Hamilton and George Wilkenfeld Can Australia become a renewable energy superpower and help the world limit global warming? Across Australia, citizens rightly anxious about the changing climate are cautiously optimistic; after all, the alternative is grim. The federal government is building an economic strategy for the nation’s future around the idea, with Treasurer Jim […]
We’ve come a long way on gender diversity but what about class?
In 2021, the coach of the Perth-based West Coast Eagles Australian rules football team said recruits who attended public schools and came from single-parent families are too costly to manage off-field and the club might be better off concentrating on private school boys from stable families. His comments came a year after a Western Australian parliamentary inquiry found elite […]
How privileged school students avoided the Covid-19 lockdown
Clive Hamilton & Myra Hamilton In the game of privilege, we are all complicit. And if we are to write about privilege, we should declare our own. We have had many advantages in life. We are both white, well-educated and well-paid, and we hail from culturally, although not materially, rich families. One of us is […]
Blaming Baby Boomers for your money woes is unfair, lazy and wrong
Clive Hamilton & Myra Hamilton [Published in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, 27 November 2023] Judging by the relentless tide of baby boomer bashing, it’s become a crime to be born in the 15 years after World War Two. On Saturday, the lead story in the Herald berated boomers for ‘hanging on to […]
Wake up, lefties, and reject wokeness
Clive Hamilton It’s time the left pushed back against woke. Afraid of being branded a racist, misogynist or transphobe, the left has been browbeaten into silence by woke activists, even though the left enabled the modern movements for black rights, gay rights and feminism. Left politics are about capitalism’s structural inequalities – corporate power, state […]