Pip Hinman

  • Green leaders speak in Sydney

    SYDNEY — Tasmanian Greens leader Christine Milne and Australian Conservation Foundation director Tricia Caswell were guest speakers at a public lecture organised by the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at Sydney University

  • Australia blocks progress at greenhouse conference

    Reports of a giant breakaway iceberg and a new 64-kilometre crack in the Larsen ice shelf in the Antarctic peninsula — dramatic indicators of warmer weather — seem to have had little or no impact on the major greenhouse gas culprits at the world climate conference in Berlin. Australia and the United States are leading the charge against strict controls of greenhouse gas emissions in the two-week conference, which began on March 28.

  • 'Cynical' retreat on old-growth forests

    "Those with a conscience in the ALP will find it hard to defend the indefensible", was how WA Green Senator Dee Margetts summed up the federal government's forests package, announced on March 30. Margetts told Green Left Weekly

  • Government evades action on greenhouse

    Conservationists have condemned the federal government for failing to come up with a concrete greenhouse gas reduction strategy before an international conference on climate change in Berlin beginning on March 27. Recent

  • Radioactive waste threat to Kakadu

    Energy Resources of Australia, the operator of the Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu in the Northern Territory, announced on March 9 that it intends to release radioactive water into nearby Magela Creek. ERA has been given permission

  • Gambling on Labor won't save the forests

    With the March 25 NSW election looming, an important opportunity exists to increase the pressure on both major parties to stop the destruction of our old growth forests. However, given that the woodchipping debate will continue

  • Timber lobby increases threats

    In fear of the political consequences, federal cabinet has been postponing a decision on whether 76 sensitive areas of old-growth forests will be logged. Cabinet is due to make a decision on March 6. The timber industry lobby

  • Woodchipping destroys jobs

    The federal government's capitulation to the timber industry on the pretext of "protecting jobs" has come under increasing criticism. One respected researcher, Dr Clive Hamilton, argues that protection of the 509 coupes would not

  • Woodchip blockade a challenge to greens

    There were angry scenes outside Parliament House last week, as some 4000 timber workers — assisted by their employers — made their demands very publicly. By contrast, the environmental movement has yet to make its presence

  • Unions oppose woodchipping

    In the current debate over woodchipping old growth forests, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the union movement had taken a unanimous position in support of the government's pro-woodchipping policy. This is not the case. The

  • The real cost of woodchipping

    In the last 20 years, many of the world's forest resources have been exploited to the point where they no longer yield old growth timber. The forests of north-west USA, British Columbia and many of the huge tracts of tropical

  • An unsustainable industry

    An unsustainable industryThe case for protecting Australia's old growth forests has tended to focus on the permanent ecological devastation caused by the industry. More recently, mounting evidence suggests that Australian