Opinion

The Dirty Dozen: Australia’s biggest climate foes

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

Read More »

I did it their way: consuming our way to freedom

 “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

Read More »

Climate and vaccine deniers are the same: beyond persuasion

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

Read More »

Why Geoengineering Suits Russia’s Carbon Agenda

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

Read More »

Geoengineering: Governance Before Research Please

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

Read More »