We should never forget the image of Treasurer Joe Hockey and finance minister Mathias Cormann smirking as they announced the end of the mining tax introduced by the former Labor government.
Along with that other image of them enjoying their post-budget cigars, they should be preserved as evidence for the day when the exploiters and oppressors face justice.
Climate crisis
Scientists at the CSIRO have published research that shows there is a 99.999% chance that rising temperatures are caused by human activity.
Writing in The Conversation they say: “Ignoring the problem is no longer an option.”
Power Failure: The Inside Story of Climate Politics Under Rudd a& Gillard
Philip Chubb
Black Inc., 2014
302 pages, $29.99 (pb)
In 2007 in Australia, “climate policy was a reform full of promise and excitement,” writes Monash University journalism academic Philip Chubb in Power Failure.
It’s all over the news: images of police in military gear pointing war zone weapons at unarmed Black people with their hands in the air. These scenes made my heart race in an all-too-familiar way.
I was devastated for Mike Brown ― the unarmed Black teenager shot dead by police on August 9 ― his family and the people of Ferguson. Almost immediately, I closed my eyes and remembered the same fear for my own family that pangs many times over a given year.
The Renewable Energy Target could become a victim of its own success. A review into the scheme, released on August 29, has recommended the federal government close new investment into renewable energy because it has produced more energy than originally planned.
But Labor, Greens and Palmer United Party senators have vowed to block any changes to the scheme.
At the same time, a debate has emerged among climate activists about whether we should “change tack” when it comes to campaigning on the issue of climate change.
One of the most frightful ironies of climate change is that it will wreak the most havoc on the people who have done the least to cause it. Pacific Island nations are in the climate frontlines — affected by rising oceans, coastal erosion and extreme weather.
This year’s Australian Climate Action Summit will take place over September 19 to 21 in Brisbane. The Community Climate Network released this statement saying the timing of the summit is more urgent than ever.
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The Australian Climate Action Summit brings individuals from diverse backgrounds, businesses, educational institutions and industries together to discuss climate change and the implementation of methods that not only provide for a sustainable future but to also combat unstable climate change.
Friends of the Earth International wrote an account of the climate meeting organised by the Venezuelan government in July, which is abridged, from the FOEI website, below. read the Margarita Declaration the meeting adopted here.
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The largest coalmine ever built in Australia, and one of the biggest in the world, received final approval from the federal environment minister Greg Hunt on July 28.
The Carmichael coalmine in central Queensland, owned by Indian company Adani, is forecast to produce 60 million tonnes of coal a year over the next 60 years. This dwarfs Australia’s current largest mine, which produces 20 million tonnes a year.
Remember all those articles that claimed global warming has stopped? Here’s proof that those were anti-scientific fantasies.
On July 21, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that last month’s average global temperature was 16.2°C, which is 0.7°C higher than the 20th-century average.
Heat records were broken on every continent apart from Antarctica. The rises were especially notable in New Zealand, northern South America, Greenland, central Africa and southern Asia.
Twenty-one people were arrested last month while engaging in peaceful civil disobedience in protest against a proposed tar sands mine in north-eastern Utah. This would threaten local land and water, as well as contribute to the global climate crisis.
As they await charges, US environmental groups expressed solidarity with the protesters who stood for freedom from dirty fossil fuels and devastating climate impacts.
The repeal of Australia’s carbon price is a milestone for a Coalition government that thinks nothing should stand between a mining company and big pile of money.
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