The real reason you won’t be reading my new book on China anytime soon
Published in The Age, 28 November 2017 Earlier this month, publisher Allen & Unwin pulled the plug on my book, Silent Invasion: How China is turning Australia into a Puppet State. The book was about to go to the typesetter. It would have been my ninth release with the company. The publisher dropped the book […]
Australian universities are helping China’s military surpass the United States
Clive Hamilton and Alex Joske Published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 October 2017 In Beijing, President Xi Jinping is systematically reforming and strengthening the military – part of the Strong Army Dream that is intimately tied to his signature slogan “the China Dream”. But it now seems that this Strong Army Dream is being […]
Political networking the Chinese way – a Sydney MP and his ‘community adviser’
Clive Hamilton and Alex Joske Published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 June 2017 On the night of the 2016 federal election, a beaming Craig Laundy was photographed surrounded by two dozen campaign supporters who had helped him retain the Sydney seat of Reid he had snatched from Labor three years earlier. Laundy has his […]
Australian taxes may help finance Chinese military capability
Clive Hamilton and Alex Joske Published in The Australian, 10 June 2017 For several years the Chinese party-state has been pursuing a co-ordinated program to acquire from abroad advanced military and industrial technology, and to do so by fair means or foul. It now emerges that Australian universities inadvertently are helping to give China the […]
How to Think About 1.5 Degrees
Astonishment was universal last December when the Paris Agreement on climate change included the aspiration to limit warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, a much tougher target than the standard of 2 degrees, now seen as too risky. It was a remarkable triumph for a long campaign by the small island states, proving that […]
Climate Policy’s House of Cards
There are the pragmatists willing to compromise to get at least something, and then there are the idealists who stick to their principles and end up with nothing. Or so the argument goes. This tired old binary has been used by various pundits to frame the division within the Climate Change Authority that saw the […]
The Climate Change Authority report: a minority view
Clive Hamilton and David Karoly As Members of the Climate Change Authority who have participated fully in the Special Review of Australia’s Climate Goals and Policies, we reached the conclusion, after much consideration, that in good conscience we could not lend our names to its report, published last week. Rather than resign we decided to […]
The Anthropocene Belongs to Earth System Science
The idea of the Anthropocene was conceived by Earth System scientists to capture the very recent rupture in Earth history arising from the impact of human activity on the Earth System as a whole. (1,2) Stop. Read that again. Take special note of the phrases “very recent rupture” and “the Earth System as a whole”. […]
Define the Anthropocene in terms of the whole Earth
Researchers must consider human impacts on entire Earth systems and not get trapped in discipline-specific definitions, says Clive Hamilton. 17 August 2016 Do we live in the Anthropocene? Officially, not yet — although the debate about whether to declare a new geological epoch will resurface later this month at the International Geological Congress in Cape Town, South […]
How Scared or Hopeful Should We Be in a Warming World?
For anyone who takes notice of the climate change debate, a mass of often-contradictory information comes flooding into our lives. Some of it prompts great alarm. The Great Barrier Reef is suffering severe bleaching. Wild fires are consuming Alberta. Last year was the warmest on record, and 15 of the 16 hottest years on record […]