When Racism Masquerades as “Equality”: The Adam Goodes Furore
Throughout most of Australia’s modern history white society has worked hard to make Indigenous Australians disappear. In the early days it took the brutal forms of ‘dispersion’ and taking children from their families. But a people can be made invisible in subtler ways. Aborigines were declared a dying race, written out of the history books, […]
‘There is such confusion in my powers’: Is an ETS a tax?
Here is a definition in search of a term: what do we call a calculated political strategy to confuse the citizenry in order to gain an electoral advantage? For anyone who thinks clearly, and wants to minimise ambiguity in their communication, definitions matter. In political discourse certain terms have diverse interpretations so definitions are not […]
Crimes Against Nature: The Banality of Ethics in the Anthropocene
Among the great crimes of the twentieth century, the most enduring will surely prove to be human disruption of the Earth’s climate. The effects of human-induced climate change are apparent now and will become severe this century, but the warming is expected to last thousands of years. That is so because extra carbon dioxide persists […]
Australia’s Kyoto Escape Hatch Now Exploited
In the saga of mendacity that is the climate policy debate, no claim has been more audacious than the one now being told by the federal government about Australia’s “success” in meeting its Kyoto emissions target. Environment minister Greg Hunt now routinely makes statements like this: We are one of the few countries in the […]
The Theodicy of the “Good Anthropocene”
To the dismay of those who first proposed it, the Anthropocene is being reframed as an event to be celebrated rather than lamented and feared. Instead of final proof of the damage done by techno-industrial hubris, the ‘ecomodernists’ welcome the new epoch as a sign of man’s ability to transform and control nature. Although the […]
“Humanity has disappointed God’s expectations”: Pope Francis’s Call to Arms
Pope Francis did not speak lightly when he said that protecting God’s creation is a service that “the Bishop of Rome is called to carry out”. And so his encyclical “Laudato Si’, on care for our common home”, released yesterday, reflects his deeply held convictions. While the encyclical’s message will require careful study to appreciate […]
The Lomborg Ruse
No one in Australia has more relentlessly attacked environmentalists, climate science, carbon taxes and the aspirations of the United Nations than Murdoch columnist Andrew Bolt. So what does it mean when Bolt sings the praises of a man who is a declared environmentalist, accepts the body of evidence for climate change, supports a carbon tax […]
Australian scientists urge banks not to finance Galilee Basin coal projects
Embargoed until 4.00 am AEST Friday 22 May 2015 MEDIA RELEASE Australian scientists urge banks not to finance Galilee Basin coal projects Canberra, 22 May 2015 – Nine eminent Australian scientists have added their voices to the call for global financial institutions to stop funding fossil fuel projects in Queensland’s Galilee Basin. Leading Australian climate […]
The Technofix Is In: A critique of “An Ecomodernist Manifesto”
The world’s best scientists are warning that the world is warming inexorably, the oceans are becoming acidic and have turned into a “plastic soup,” and we are in the middle of the kind of mass extinction event not seen on the planet in millions of years. But don’t worry — a new breed of environmentalists […]
Why Are Academics So Nasty?
Late last year I submitted a book proposal to a prestigious academic publisher. Last week I was sent a reader’s report on the proposal that is so vicious in tone and crushing in intent that, after recovering from the shock, I began to wonder why this kind of thing is so rife in the academic […]