Published by The Guardian, 13 September 2021 Facts are puny against the carapace of denial when people’s sense of self is at stake. However, in the case of Covid deniers, imminent death seems to do the trick In 1927, an article in the venerable medical journal the Lancet commented on the opposition to smallpox vaccination […]
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Published in The Guardian, 20 October 2021 The narrative of the beleaguered farmer runs deep in the national psyche. It’s one often weaponised to berate pampered city-slickers who don’t understand what life in the bush—what real life—is about. The National Party has come up with a new twist on the old grievance—farmers have been paying […]
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Sometimes sheer bloody-minded politics overrules hard science. A good example is Deputy Premier John Barilaro’s “brumby bill”, passed by the NSW Parliament three years ago. Scientists had been raising the alarm about the destruction of Kosciuszko National Park caused by the explosion in the feral horse population, but Barilaro’s bill vetoed culling. Since then, numbers […]
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Clive Hamilton After banning Huawei from Britain’s communications system, investment from China in the country’s energy system poses a greater security risk. It’s often said that investment from China should be treated in the same way as investment from other countries. If only it were true. But China is different because businesses in China cooperate […]
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(Published in the National Post (Canada), June 18, 2020) As someone who has studied the influence of China in Canada, it is clear to me that this country needs to put in place defences against the covert, coercive and corrupt influence of the CPC, which has been systematically eroding resistance to it from within Under […]
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(Published in The Australian, May 6, 2020) A 20-year-old philosophy student campaigning against uni’s links with Chinese Communist Party subject to assault, online hate, death threats. The University of Queensland is going to extraordinary lengths to silence its most effective critic, a 20-year-old philosophy student who has campaigned against the university’s tight links with the […]
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(Published in Le Monde, 10 January 2020) It feels like the apocalypse has come. A national catastrophe is unfolding, with each day bringing new shocks. ‘The sky was on fire.’ ‘So fast and so angry.’ ‘It was like a warzone.’ These are some of the words used to capture the ferocity of the firestorms by […]
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It’s uncomfortable when a belief you have long held is contradicted by new facts. Even more so if an entire worldview comes under pressure from the evidence. Psychologists call it ‘‘cognitive dissonance’’ and it explains why it is so hard to change our minds even though we flatter ourselves that we base our opinions on […]
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Clive Hamilton Are Extinction Rebellion protesters shooting themselves in the foot? Commentators have been quick to accuse them of doing no more than annoying motorists and alienating the public from their cause. That argument assumes that all protests are aimed at winning over the public to one’s point of view. Put another way, protests are […]
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Recent events at the University of Queensland have brought into sharp relief the Chinese Communist Party’s influence activities on Australian campuses. Tensions arising from the mass protests in Hong Kong have prompted democracy activists in the West to speak out, but they have also inflamed nationalist sentiment among some Chinese students, to the point where […]
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Comments at the launch of the Chinese-language edition of Silent Invasion 无声的入侵 Ashfield, Sydney, Sunday 2 June 2019 I thank Professor Feng Chongyi for his generous introduction and the Australian Values Alliance for organizing today’s launch. Welcome everyone. Liu Xiaobo once wrote: “Freedom of expression is the foundation of human rights, the source of humanity, […]
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We are only now becoming aware that Beijing’s interference in our political system goes well beyond the activities of wealthy, Party-linked donors. In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party, through its global United Front network, has been actively encouraging trusted members of Chinese communities in countries like Australia to become directly involved in running for […]
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Published in The Daily Telegraph, May 7 2018 When U.S. intelligence chiefs presented Donald Trump with information that made him uncomfortable, he flew into a rage, accusing them of leaking “fake news” and acting like “Nazi Germany”. Now Paul Keating has done the same. Australia’s intelligence chiefs are “nutters”, he said on Sunday. They’ve “gone […]
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With a Labor government likely within a few months, Gareth Evans’ references to “the rise of anti-Chinese sentiment” and “hyper-anxiety” about “Chinese influence” becomes more worrying because if his view influences senior Labor ministers then it would be a godsend for the CCP.
Lecture to Ascot Vale ALP
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Published in the Australian, 17 December 2018 The stage is being set for the emergence of two rival technological empires, China’s and America’s, each aimed at supremacy over the other, with the world as the prize. Clive Hamilton says Australia will have to choose. The arrest in Canada of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou could be […]
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Published in Meanjin, August 21, 2018 Climate change policy has morphed into ‘energy policy’ to make it more palatable to conservatives. But for Tony Abbott it’s not a contest over policy differences; it’s a battle for the nation’s soul. In the United States, conservatives fight a fierce culture war over abortion, guns, sexual identity, God […]
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Published in the Australian Financial Review, January 13, 2019 Chinese companies are required by law to obey directives from Beijing’s intelligence agencies. So why would our regulators permit a giant Australian healthcare provider that is privy to highly sensitive records on hundreds of thousands of Australians to be acquired by a Chinese company? The Jangho […]
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Published in Policy Forum, 9 April 2018 How committed is Australia to its foundational liberal values? Some of the responses to the emerging debate on CCP influence in the country provide plenty of reason for concern, Clive Hamilton writes. My book, Silent Invasion: The Influence of China in Australia, has been met with an impassioned reception […]
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Academics in Australia might reflect on the fact that scholarly books critical of the Chinese Communist Party are now shunned by publishers. Scholars who work on China know that continued access to the country requires them to play by Beijing’s rules, which for most means self-censorship – the dirty secret of China studies in Australia. […]
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18 March 2018 Dear David As you know, I was disappointed when you cancelled the launch event for my book that you had enthusiastically agreed to host. I’m more disappointed to read the justification you have given for your actions in your recent Facebook post. I would expect you, as a barrister, to take account […]
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Published by The Sydney Morning Herald, 18 March 2018 When writing my book Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia, I expected Communist Party spokespersons in Beijing to attack me as racist and “anti-China”. I didn’t expect people like Tim Soutphommasane, our Race Discrimination Commissioner, to parrot those criticisms in The Age and The Sydney Morning […]
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Published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 February, 2018 Canberra is finally beginning to push back against Beijing’s long-running campaign to seduce our elites so completely that the nation kow-tows before China’s wishes. The first phase of the pushback culminated in December with the Turnbull government introducing legislation to outlaw foreign interference operations and novel […]
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Published in Times Higher Education, 4 January 2018 It’s a truism that we take our freedoms for granted until they are taken away, but recent events have really driven that home to me. In November, my imminent book exposing the subversive activities of the CPC in Australia was dropped by its publisher because it feared […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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”. […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Every decent person looks on goggle eyed as Donald Trump continues his unlikely march to the Republican Party nomination. We are mesmerized by how he goes out of his way to flout every rule of “political correctness”, from calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and flirting with the Ku Klux Klan, to dismissing women he does not […]
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It is natural to adopt a cynical view of the global climate change conference now taking place outside Paris. Behind the noble public declarations self-interest is ruthlessly asserted in the private negotiating rooms. Rules are bent, scrutiny is resisted and numbers are manipulated to hide emissions. Yet from another standpoint, there is something magnificent taking […]
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The most surprising revelation here at the Paris climate conference has been the astonishing shift in the world of investors over the past 12 months. There is now unprecedented momentum towards participating in the transition to a low-carbon economy, and the view at the “big end” of the conference is that a strong agreement will […]
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How should we react to the likely outcome of the Paris climate conference? Unless something dramatic happens overnight it is very likely that the news media on Sunday morning will hail the Paris agreement as a breakthrough and a big victory for those pushing for strong action on carbon emissions. Yet on Friday we heard […]
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In essence, the Paris conference may be seen as a ceremony to which nations come to reaffirm their promises in the presence of the global community, that is, to make a public commitment to play their part in the shared enterprise of combatting global warming. This is so because virtually all delegations arriving in Paris […]
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Moral equivalence is among the standard logical fallacies identified by philosophers. “It seeks to draw comparisons”, goes a definition, “between different, often unrelated things, to make a point that one is just as bad as the other”. For lecturers in logic seeking a perfect case study, one has just been published by the federal government […]
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An article I wrote critical of those who plan to build a spaceship to escape an Earth ruined by climate change attracted a response from Steve Fuller, who is described as the sociologist of the “space ark” project I had in mind. Fuller situates my commentary within my wider critique of “ecomodernism”. He writes that […]
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Please note: This article contains a word some find offensive. Mexican immigrants are “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.” In response to outrage at his statements like this one, Donald Trump replies: “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct”. On this vague platform Trump has made himself a serious […]
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If you believe what you read in the Daily Telegraph saving the planet must mean trashing the economy. That’s their story and they’re sticking to it, no matter what the evidence shows. If the numbers show the opposite, well, they have ways. And so last week the Murdoch tabloid took a bunch of numbers concocted […]
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When the Climate Change Authority – of which I’m a member – concluded that Australia should reduce its carbon emissions by 40-60% below 2000 levels in 2030, and by 30% in 2025, it did not pick the numbers out of the air. Those target levels are the minimum necessary for Australia to contribute its fair share to […]
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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, […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Pope Francis has made no secret of his conviction that human-induced climate change, along with other forms of environmental degradation, represents a grave threat to humanity’s future. At times he even speaks in quasi-apocalyptic terms: “Let us not allow omens of destruction and death to accompany the advance of this world!” His forthcoming “ecological encyclical” […]
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“Save the world and make a little cash on the side.” That’s the motto of Russ George, the colourful entrepreneur behind Planktos Science who wants to put geoengineering into practice now. George is convinced that by adding iron sulphate to the oceans, he can stimulate plankton blooms and so suck enough carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to […]
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The publication of a hefty two-volume report on geoengineering by the US National Research Council represents a marked shift in the global debate over how to respond to global warming. To date, the debate has been about mitigation, with the need for some adaption because of the failure to reduce emissions adequately. The new report, backed by […]
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The Republican Party has long resisted action on climate change, but now that much of the electorate wants something done, it needs to find a way out of the hole it has dug for itself. A committee appointed by the National Research Council may just have handed the party a ladder. In a two-volume report, […]
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China’s greenhouse gas emissions now surpass the combined total of the United Sates and the European Union. When measured on a per person basis, the average Chinese is responsible for more damage to the climate than the average European. The gaps will become wider. Unless China soon stops and reverses the rampant growth of its […]
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In his post “Against the Anthropocene”, Kieran Suckling makes two main arguments. The first is that the choice of “Anthropocene” as the name for the new epoch breaks with stratigraphic tradition; he feels uncomfortable with a change in tradition, not least because he suspects the break reflects a hidden political objective. The second is that […]
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Why is it that some of those who publish scientific papers about “the Anthropocene” have such a profoundly mistaken understanding of what the concept means? And why do referees and journal editors let the papers through? I was exasperated by this again on reading another paper on the starting date controversy, this one titled “The […]
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With the arrival of the Anthropocene we must now be suspicious of all ideas developed in the last 10,000 years, including James Lovelock’s notion of Gaia which, it turns out, is a child of the Holocene. The Anthropocene is a reversion to the unruly and chaotic conditions before the Holocene’s 10-millennium epoch of calm. Now […]
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Gaia Does Not Negotiate A contribution to “The Situation Facing the Moderns After the Intrusion of Gaïa: A Philosophical Simulation”, the final evaluation conference of the project An Inquiry into Modes of Existence (AIME) Amphitheatre Caquot, Sciences Po, Paris, July 28-29, 2014 by one of Gaia’s Chargés d’Affaires invited to a diplomatic workshop. Gaia does […]
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The New Environmentalism Will Lead Us To Disaster So-called ecopragmatists say we can have a “good Anthropocene.” They’re dead wrong. Clive Hamilton Published in Scientific American, 19 June 2014 Fourteen years ago, when a frustrated Paul Crutzen blurted out the word “Anthropocene” at a scientific meeting in Mexico, the famous atmospheric chemist was expressing his […]
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Andrew Revkin Dot Earth blog New York Times Dear Andy Thanks for sending the link to your talk on “Charting Paths to a ‘Good’ Anthropocene”. Since you ask for responses let me express my view bluntly. In short, I think those who argue for the “good Anthropocene” are unscientific and live in a fantasy world […]
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So profound has been the influence of humans that Earth system scientists have proposed that the Earth has entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. The new epoch marks the end of the Holocene, a 10,000-year period of climatic stability and clemency that permitted civilization to flourish. What does it mean for humankind to inscribe […]
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Who are the 12 people doing the most to block action on climate change in Australia? With a new government in place, and Australia’s emissions stubbornly high, we name and shame a fresh Dirty Dozen … Who has been most responsible in recent times for preventing progress in the reduction of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions? […]
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The Climate Change Authority’s new report on emission reduction targets makes a compelling argument for Australia to go much further in cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Instead of the current target of a 5% cut, it recommends emission reductions of 19% by 2020 and 40%-to-60% by 2030 as a responsible path to avoiding the worst impacts […]
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“I’ll scream”, the priest muttered as he left the funeral, “if I have to listen to ‘I Did It My Way’ one more time.” What explains the vogue to play the Sinatra anthem at one’s funeral? It’s a fair bet that anyone who makes a posthumous declaration to the world that he did it his […]
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Governments are worried. Vaccination rates are falling under the influence of a campaign of misinformation by a small minority of fanatics. Scientifically there is no debate about immunisation, with every relevant health authority strongly endorsing vaccination. But anti-vaccination activists refuse to accept the evidence, claiming that “every issue has two sides”. They believe vaccination is […]
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Published in the Guardian, 24 September 2013 News that Russia is calling for geoengineering be considered by the IPCC as a possible response to global warming makes a perverse kind of sense. No government, not even those of Canada and Australia, has been more eager to open up new sources of fossil energy than Russia’s. […]
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In a recent issue of Science, Edward Parson and David Keith put forward a plan to ‘end the deadlock on governance of geoengineering research’ (1). Like geoengineering research itself, the question of governance is in its infancy (2, 3). It is not apparent that rival camps with well-developed but conflicting proposals have emerged, but Parson […]
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Abstract Proposals to respond to climate change by geoengineering the Earth’s climate system, such as by regulating the amount of sunlight reaching the planet, may be seen as a radical fulfillment of Heidegger’s understanding of technology as destiny. Before geoengineering was conceivable, the Earth as a whole had to be representable as a total object, […]
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A recent Vote Compass poll shows 61% of Australian adults want the federal government to do more to tackle climate change; 18% want it to do less. This figure, consistent with many polls over the years, squares with various developments in Australian politics but contradicts others. The Howard Government lost the 2007 election in part […]
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Published on The Drum, ABC, 26 August 2013 Six years ago, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was 90 per cent certain that human activity was the main cause of climate change. That percentage has since risen to 95, according to a new draft report leaked last week. Try as climate deniers might, they can’t […]
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I have never called for democracy to be suspended. So why is this meme prevalent on the Internet? Why is it that whenever I write anything about climate change some commenters feel obliged to wheel it out as if it invalidates everything I say? Here is the explanation. For many years I have been giving […]
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When the computer Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov it seemed to many that we had crossed a threshold. By beating us at our most complex intellectual task, man had at last been defeated by a machine. Kasparov’s defeat prompted anguish from those fearful of the colonizing power of the machine world. Newspapers […]
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published in the New York Times, 21 May 2013 Geoengineering: Our Last Hope, or a False Promise? Manipulating the planet could be perilous. Clive Hamilton, a professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University, is the author, most recently, of “Earthmasters: The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering.” We should not try to play […]
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Published in the EuTRACE Journal, April 2013 Will researching geoengineering ease pressure on governments to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions? The suspicion that it will explains why many people feel nervous about the whole climate engineering enterprise. To counter this fear, geoengineering researchers and supporters frequently say that more information is always a good thing, […]
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Published in Nature, 10 April 2013 The idea of applying geoengineering research to mitigate climate change has not been thought through, argues Clive Hamilton. Fresh concerns about using geoengineering projects to cool the planet emerged late last month, when scientists at the UK Met Office said that possible unintended consequences demanded global oversight of such schemes. […]
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Published by The Guardian, 22 March 2013 Beijing wants to cut emissions without hindering growth and avert a revolt from a population under extreme climate stress The political dilemma over geoengineering – deliberate, large-scale intervention in the climate system designed to counter global warming or offset some of its effects – will perhaps be most […]
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Peter Singer responding to Clive Hamilton on Earthmasters
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In response to the heatwave that set a new Australia-wide record on 7 January, when the national average maximum reached 40.33°C, , the Bureau of Meteorology issued a statement that, on reflection, sounds the death knell for all of the social sciences taught in our universities. “Everything that happens in the climate system now”, the […]
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Will anti-coal activist Jonathan Moylan receive justice if he is charged over his hoax? ASIC, which will formally interview Moylan next week, is under enormous pressure to “make an example” of the 24-year old. It is expected he will be charged with breaching Section 1041E of the Corporations Act, which outlaws false and misleading statements […]
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by Clive Hamilton, Alex Doherty published by New Left Project 15 January 2013 As Australia suffered a record breaking heatwave, David Jones of the Australian Bureau of Meterology remarked that ‘‘Clearly, the climate system is responding to the background warming trend. Everything that happens in the climate system now is taking place on a planet […]
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Yesterday an anti-coal activist, Jonathan Moylan, issued a media release purportedly from the ANZ Bank withdrawing a loan from a coal company. The hoax wiped $314 million from the value of Whitehaven Coal, although the share prices recovered after the ruse was revealed. ASIC has announced that it is investigating whether Moylan has contravened provisions […]
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“In the end Koch‘s retro-Marxism, Beck‘s utopian internationalism and Giddens‘s climate third way cannot come to grips with the planetary scale and millennial lifetime of climate disruption. In the Anthropocene, political analysis can no longer be grounded in an environment that can be taken for granted, a natural world that provides a mere backdrop for […]
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Senator Cory Bernardi has been reviled for associating homosexuality with something repugnant, bestiality. Yet Australia has just awarded its highest civilian honour to a philosopher who provides a moral defence of sex with animals. Professor Peter Singer, the renowned Australian philosopher at Princeton University, believes that the taboo on bestiality is an anomaly, a prohibition […]
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Scientific thinking has changed radically over the last two decades, so that what we used to think of as “the environment”-the natural world spread around us-no longer exists. So the default position is no longer how to minimize our impact on the environment, but how best to intervene. The goal can no longer be to […]
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When the denial machine goes after climate scientists it is, as one of them said, like the marines going into battle against boy scouts. The brutality of the attacks has once again been confirmed by the release of some of the emails sent to Phil Jones, the University of East Anglia climate scientist at the […]
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Geoengineering can be understood as the fulfillment of the entire technological project, because, in geoengineering, the Earth as a whole is represented as an object available for human regulation. The thinking that gives rise to geoengineering is the same thinking that first creates the world as an object suitable for technological manipulation. A contribution to […]
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Who would have thought the Melbourne Theatre Company would get into bed with Andrew Bolt? The Conversation, 9 May 2012
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Because it falls for the deniers’ tactic of doubt-mongering, ABC TV’s program “I Can Change Your Mind…About Climate Change” is a victory for climate denial even before it goes to air.Crikey, 26 April 2012
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Affluence rather than population growth is mainly responsible for the climate crisis.The Conversation, 23 April 2012
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A response to Bruno Latour’s “Love Your Monsters: Why We Must Care for Our Technologies As We Do Our Children” [1] If Frankenstein is to serve as a parable for “political ecology” then Mary Shelley’s plot must be reworked. In the revised version Dr Frankenstein is no more than an inquisitive but anxious assistant to the […]
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You know the situation is getting desperate when three bio-ethicists propose genetically modifying humans to reduce our environmental impact. In a bizarre paper titled ‘Human engineering and climate change’, Matthew Liao, Anders Sandberg and Rebecca Roache argue we should seriously consider technologies to engineer human bodies to reduce carbon emissions. One leading idea is genetic […]
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Why did the Australian, a newspaper that has heavily criticised use of the defamation laws, launch legal action to force the ABC to take down an article by Robert Manne? The Conversation, 8 March 2012
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The secret funding of the Heartland Institute once again focuses attention on the financing of the Institute of Public Affairs and particularly its sustained attacks on climate science and all policies aimed at cutting Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. Despite its refusal to divulge, we can make a good guess at where a large part of its recent […]
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Global warming science has become a battleground in a wider cultural war, particularly in the United States where rejecting climate science has been seamlessly adopted by right-wing populism—notably by the Tea Party, the movement of those who demand their fair share of injustice. In these circumstances scientific facts are trumped by beliefs, so that climate […]
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Three main justifications are used to defend geoengineering research and possible deployment—it will allow us to buy time, it will allow us to respond to a climate emergency, and it may be the best option economically. Against these a number of ethical risks intrude: we may use the possibility of climate engineering to blind ourselves […]
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This article (published on “The Conversation”) is a commentary on Adam Curtis’s three-part documentary All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, which was braodcast on SBS TV in October-November 2011.
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“With women now to take on combat roles in the military it is time to sound The Last Post over the rotting corpse of feminism.” An opinion article published in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, 30 September 2011.
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“One of the more bizarre accusations made against people like the authors who appear in this powerful, new book, Big Porn Inc., is that they are anti-sex. This accusation is made by post-modern academics who style themselves pro-sex. Of course, the authors are not anti-sex. They are anti-degradation, anti-exploitation, anti-coercion and anti-trafficking. In truth these are […]
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In the standard consequentialist view of climate ethics, the question of whether it is ethically justified intentionally to shift the planet to a warmer or cooler climate depends on an assessment of the costs and benefits of the new state compared to the old one. In this view the natural world is framed as a […]
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A talk (by videolink) to the National Climate Action Summit University of Melbourne, 9 April 2011 The difficulty and importance of the global warming campaign is many times greater than every other environmental struggle. Controlling carbon pollution requires a wholesale industrial restructuring and defeat of the most powerful industry coalition ever assembled. Yet in the […]
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Climate scientists have found themselves caught up in a hot political debate that they do not really understand or want to be part of, yet they have been the target of savvy, secretive and ruthless organisations ready to pounce on anything they said or wrote. This is the real story of “Climategate”. Instead, the scientists in question have […]
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Environmentalism: The Way Forward A talk (by videolink) to the National Climate Action Summit University of Melbourne, 9 April 2011 Clive Hamilton The difficulty and importance of the global warming campaign is many times greater than every other environmental struggle. Controlling carbon pollution requires a wholesale industrial restructuring and defeat of the most powerful industry […]
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Climate denial versus climate science A speech at the launch of Requiem for a Species Global Change Institute, University of Queensland, 24 March 2010 Clive Hamilton The attack on climate science in recent times has been orchestrated, relentless, and effective. Although it has reached fever pitch over the last six months, the campaign has been […]
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A lecture at the “Idle Hours” exhibition National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, 5 February 2010 Clive Hamilton I am grateful to the National Portrait Gallery for inviting me to give this talk and particularly to Sarah Engledow for curating this subtle and arresting exhibition. It occurred to me too late that with my choice of title, […]
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Extensive social scientific research into human reactions to threats provides some insights into the psychological strategies humans are likely to adopt in response to the stresses of living in a hotter world. These “coping strategies” are designed to defend against or manage the unpleasant emotions associated with “waking up” to the dangers of a warming […]
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The Rebirth of Nature and the Climate Crisis A Sydney Ideas Lecture University of Sydney, 7th July 2009 Clive Hamilton Introduction1 The failure of humanity to respond to the threat of global warming with anything like the urgency demanded by climate science is deeply puzzling. Undoubtedly, our preoccupation with economic growth, and the way it […]
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Yale economist William Nordhaus is an influential voice in the US climate policy debate. Although he writes that global warming is a serious problem, the whole tenor of his analysis is to urge caution and delay. His carbon tax proposal contravenes globally agreed principles and plays into the hands of those opposed to urgent action […]
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Speech at the Climate Action Summit Australian National University, 31 January 2009 Clive Hamilton It seems a long time ago that our new Prime Minister, the man who would sweep away 11 years of Howard Government denialism, went to Bali and declared to the world: Australia now stands ready to assume its responsibility … Climate […]
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Annual University Lecture at the Australian Defence Force Academy 10 September 2008 Clive Hamilton1 In 1956 a woman in Minneapolis began to receive communications from an extra-terrestrial being named Sananda. Marion Keech heard that a great flood would cleanse the world of earthlings at mid-night on 21 December. Only those who believed in Sananda […]
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Lecture in the Sydney Ideas series, University of Sydney, 12 August 2008 Clive Hamilton In the preface to The Freedom Paradox I say that I wrote the book to answer the question of why it is that, despite the wealth and freedom now enjoyed by most citizens of rich countries, we do not appear […]
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A contribution to the Art Censorship: the bigger picture forum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 12 June 2008 Clive Hamilton When I looked at the twenty or so Bill Henson photos on the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery website just hours before they were taken down I could see immediately that they were not pornographic. They struck […]
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A speech to senior executives of the Australian Public Service, organized by the Public Service Commission The Boat House, Canberra, 29 April 2008 Clive Hamilton1 In an oft-quoted speech Robert F. Kennedy said that GNP “measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to […]
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After-dinner speech to the conference of Sustainable Population Australia University House, Australian National University, 14 March 2008 Clive Hamilton Which Australian politician said this? “If Australia continues to grow at 4 per cent per annum for the next 20 years my kids are going to be nominally twice as wealthy as they are now, but […]
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Speech against the proposition at a debate organized by the Socratic Forum Australian National University, 11 March 2008 Clive Hamilton I have been asked to speak against the proposition. In the sweep of human history we can identify a great trend. As humans progress their consciousness becomes less parochial, their moral horizons expand to take […]
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An address to a meeting of the Environmental Givers Network Melbourne, 17 October 2007 Clive Hamilton1 Today, I plan to talk about the state of climate science, the Federal Government’s evolving international position and the emerging security issues associated with climate change. Political actors typically engage in exaggeration to advance their case. Environmental campaigns are […]
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A talk to a seminar organised by Compass Portcullis House, House of Commons, London, 4th October 2007 Clive Hamilton1 The Individualised World Not long ago, while walking through Sydney’s CBD, I overheard a snippet of conversation between two young women sitting in the sun. “I’m not sure what to do with my life,” said one. […]
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The Scary Politics of Climate Change A talk to the Brisbane Writer’s Festival 15 September 2007 Clive Hamilton Fear of stating the truth Political actors typically engage in exaggeration to advance their case. The Labor Party exaggerated the likely damage due to the introduction of the GST, despite the fact that Paul Keating wanted to […]
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A talk to the Melbourne Writer’s Festival Storey Hall, 31 August 2007 Clive Hamilton Franz Kafka once wrote that “it is an extremely painful thing to be ruled by laws one does not know”.1 The story in which Kafka made this observation told of an imaginary kingdom ruled by secretive nobles who kept knowledge of […]
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A debate at Macquarie University, 15 August 2007 Our opponents have tried to persuade you that, because we believe capitalism is bad for the soul, we are just tofu-eating, poetry-reading, bicycle-riding, leftist basket weavers. We plead guilty to all charges, except basket-weaving. Capitalism’s fine in its place; the problem is that it has a restless […]
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Trade and Environmental Governance Speech to an Open Forum on International Environmental Governance Organised by the European Union Delegation in Australia Opera House, Sydney, 24 November 2006 Clive Hamilton1 There is widespread concern that today’s international institutions are inadequate to deal with the serious environmental dangers faced by the world. The foremost worry is the […]
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The Milthorpe Lecture, Macquarie University Sydney, 8th June 2006 Clive Hamilton1 Late one day last month, the Federal Government posted on its website a report on the science of climate change which it had commissioned from Professor Will Steffen of the ANU.2 The purpose of the report was to provide a review of developments in […]
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Against the Pursuit of Happiness A talk to the Sydney Writers’ Festival, 27th May 2006 Clive Hamilton1 Escalating desire Prader-Willi syndrome is a genetic disorder of children characterised by, among other things, an insatiable appetite, leading its sufferers to seek out food by almost any means. Because the mechanism in the brain that signals satiation […]
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THE AUSTRALIA INSTITUTE The Pressures of City Living After-dinner speech to the Fenner Conference Old Parliament House, 25th May 2006 Clive Hamilton1 Tonight I would like to talk about some of the psychological costs of urban living. For it seems to me that the epidemic of mental disorders and widespread anomie that characterise modern affluent […]
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THE AUSTRALIA INSTITUTE The Intensification of Consumerism and Reactions Against It A Public Lecture Demography and Sociology Program, ANU National Museum of Australia, 2 May 2006 Clive Hamilton In a previous era, there was a clear distinction between ordinary goods consumed by the masses and luxury goods consumed by the wealthy minority, the richest 5 […]
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A talk to a Productivity Commission Retreat Lindenderry, Victoria, 11 May 2006 Clive Hamilton Executive Director The Australia Institute Looking through the list of Commission publications over the last two to three years indicates that the Commission’s remit has broadened a great deal from the days of deregulation, privatization and trade liberalization. This broadening has […]
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Address to the Commencement Dinner of Bruce Hall, ANU, 21 March 2003 Dr Clive Hamilton Executive Director, The Australia Institute I would like to start on a sombre note. You may have read in the last two days about a young American woman, Rachel Corrie, who left her university studies to go to the Middle […]
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THE AUSTRALIA INSTITUTE Marketing and Modern Consumerism A speech to the Third National Consumer Congress Melbourne 16 March 2006 Clive Hamilton In a previous era, there was a clear distinction between ordinary goods consumed by the masses and luxury goods consumed by the wealthy minority, the richest 5 per cent or so of the population. […]
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A talk to the Fabian Society, Melbourne, 8th March 2006 on the occasion of the publication of What’s Left? The death of social democracy Quarterly Essay 21 (Black Inc. 2006) Clive Hamilton1 The Individualised World Not long ago, while walking through Sydney’s CBD at lunchtime, I overheard a snippet of conversation between two young women […]
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THE AUSTRALIA INSTITUTE The Dirty Politics of Climate Change Speech to the Climate Change and Business Conference Hilton Hotel, Adelaide, 20 February 2006 Clive Hamilton1 Behind the daily news reports there is a secret world of politics in Canberra, the world in which the real business is transacted. It’s a world of powerful lobbyists who […]
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A Speech to Cogito, Parliament House, Stockholm 24th November 2005 Clive Hamilton1 I am very pleased to be addressing you today, especially in this august place. Let me thank Claudio Aguirre-Bianchi especially for inviting me to travel to Sweden to talk to you about the ideas I have set out in my book Growth Fetish,2 […]
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A talk to the Canberra Writers’ Festival, 8 October 2005 Clive Hamilton The poverty debate In May this year the St Vincent de Paul Society published a paper arguing that income inequality has been increasing in Australia. It was a well-researched paper drawing on ABS statistics showing that by most measures income inequality has worsened […]
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A Speech to ‘Politics in the Pub’ Gaelic Club, Sydney, 22nd July 2005 Clive Hamilton1 Let me begin with some background to the thinking that led to the development of the Wellbeing Manifesto. Over the last two or three decades, the neoliberal revolution – which in Australia we call economic rationalism – has swept all […]
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THE AUSTRALIA INSTITUTE Speech at the launch of the Wellbeing Manifesto Edge Theatre, Federation Square, Melbourne, 14th June 2005 Clive Hamilton, Executive Director, The Australia Institute Let me begin with some background to the thinking that led to the development of the Wellbeing Manifesto that we are launching today. Over the last two or three […]
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Speech to a Dinner for Public Education Day Canberra, 19th May 2005 Clive Hamilton It’s a tough time for public schools in Australia. The consensus that once joined all parties in strong support for the public system has broken down with conservatives on the war-path against public schools and what they stand for. Like most […]
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Speech to the Manning Clark House conference Science and Ethics: Can homo sapiens survive? Academy of Science, Canberra, 17 May 2005 Clive Hamilton1 Let me begin with an anecdote. A young man studying engineering at university said to a young women studying sociology: ‘The social sciences are useless; only maths and engineering and the hard […]
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Speech to a public forum on organised by ACF BMW Edge Theatre, Federation Square, Melbourne 18 February 2005 Clive Hamilton1 One of the more profound changes in Australia over the last decade has been the extraordinary rise in personal debt. In the last ten years personal debt has increased from a little over $6,000 per […]
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THE AUSTRALIA INSTITUTE Speech at the launch of In search of sustainability edited by Jenny Goldie, Bob Douglas and Bryan Furnass NSW Parliament House, Sydney 18 January 2005 Clive Hamilton1 It’s a pleasure to be here to help launch this new book on sustainability. I think its publication provides an opportunity to reflect on where […]
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Isolating the Great Southern Land National Institute for Environment Public Lecture Manning Clark Centre, ANU 1st September 2004 Clive Hamilton Executive Director The Australia Institute1 The debate about the implications of climate change is spreading to new areas. Most recently attention has focussed on the security implications of global climate change. Earlier this year The […]
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Address to the Annual Conference of the Teachers of English, Sydney, 4th July 2004 Clive Hamilton Executive Director The Australia Institute The dominant cultural force today is that of materialism and the marketing society that goes with it. Children grow up in a dense fog of commercial messages which form the most powerful influence on […]
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Non-government organisations in Australia Address to the Communities in Control Conference Melbourne, 7th June 2004 Clive Hamilton Executive Director The Australia Institute1 “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” …..Dom Helder Camara, Archbishop of Recife, Brazil NGOs and […]
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Is this as good as it gets? 15th Maurice Blackburn Oration Coburg Town Hall 25th February 2004 Clive Hamilton Executive Director, The Australia Institute Until recently, there has never been a time in human history when each of us could hope to live a truly fulfilling life. From the earliest days, the hopes of ordinary […]
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The Reid Oration, University of Western Australia 29th July 2003 Clive Hamilton Executive Director, The Australia Institute At a news conference soon after he became Prime Minister in 1996 John Howard said that the measure of success or failure of his government will be whether or not he can achieve a 4% growth rate. No […]
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The Queen and Me After-dinner speech to the AGM of the Australian Republican Movement Canberra, 31st May 2003 Clive Hamilton Executive Director The Australia Institute I grew up in Yarralumla. Then it was the name of a fairly ordinary Canberra suburb and not a synonym for the Governor General. But we knew what was at […]
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A speech to the Sydney Writers Festival May 25th 2003 Clive Hamilton1 In Growth Fetish I argue that it has become apparent that the liberation movements of the sixties and seventies – the sexual revolution, the counter-culture, the women’s movement and the civil rights movement – have had some unforeseen and regrettable consequences. Contrary to the […]
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An address to a seminar organised by the Economic Society of New South Wales Reserve Bank, Sydney 17th April 2002 Executive Director, The Australia Institute www.tai.org.au Introduction I don’t want to dwell on the economic arguments for population growth and higher levels of immigration because I don’t believe the economics of the issue are very important. […]
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After-Dinner Speech to the Biennial Conference of the International Society for Ecological Economics 7th July 2000, Parliament House, Canberra Clive Hamilton Let me begin by welcoming our international visitors to Australia. I hope you are not having too much difficulty with the language. Australian English − sometimes called Strine − takes a bit of getting […]
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A speech to the Australian Trucking Association conference Brisbane 13th April 2000 Dr Clive Hamilton Executive Director, The Australia Institute Last October the UK’s Meteorological Office released a new report on the expected effects of climate change. Over several decades the rise in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere will mean: •widespread hunger, especially in […]
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A talk to Politics in the Pub Harold Park Hotel, Sydney, Friday September 4th 1998 Clive Hamilton The astounding success of Hansonism is, as much as anything else, a product of the failure of spin. It is the result of the inauthenticity of Australian politics in the 1980s and 90s, and the ultimate inability of […]
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Clive Hamilton Executive Director, The Australia Institute www.tai.org.au In 1997 I participated in a study of the contribution of koalas to the Australian tourism industry. The study was commissioned by the Australian Koala Foundation, which believed that governments and the public, while reasonably well informed about the threats to koalas, were unaware of the economic […]
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