Jun 18 2013
US climate activist Bill McKibben recently toured Australia as part of his “Do the Maths” campaign advocating divestment from fossil fuels, based on the arithmetic which shows to avoid dangerous climate change we must leave most fossil fuel reserves in the ground. Of course, the Australian government and businesses scoffed. Now, this reality has been …
Jun 14 2013
As I have discussed previously, the Liberal Party of Australia have promised in certain terms to repeal the carbon tax. I still find it difficult to believe there is any way they can wiggle out of their extremely strong pronouncements on the matter, at least as long as Tony Abbott remains their leader. It seems …
May 17 2013
The Australian Labor government has yet again ignored climate change in its latest budget. Treasury’s forecast for the Australian carbon price in 2015 (when it is scheduled to become an internationally-linked emissions trading scheme or ETS) has been revised downward from $29/tonne to $12.10/tonne, a belated implicit admission that its decision to link to the …
Apr 18 2013
Yesterday the European Parliament voted down a European Commission proposal to postpone the auction of 900 million permits for the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) from 2013-2015 until 2019-2020 (called “backloading”). The proposal was predictably opposed by Poland and other eastern European countries, and unfortunately also met resistance from conservative forces within some …
Apr 11 2013
Australia’s carbon price, presently fixed at $23/tonne, is the subject of many political talking points. The most important (and perhaps most confusing) disagreement is over whether or not the carbon price is effective. The Labor government and the Greens, who designed the policy, claim the carbon price is already cutting emissions, pointing to reports that …
Mar 19 2013
There is much debate in Australia, particularly in the political sphere, about who is a climate change denier. To answer that question, we first have to clarify what we mean by climate change denial. The book Climate Change Denial by Haydn Washington and John Cook helpfully distinguishes between several different stages of denial: literal, interpretative, …
Mar 16 2013
Figure 1: Examples of extreme weather records broken during Australian summer 2012-13. (Source: Climate Commission) Australia is recovering from its hottest summer on record, dubbed the “Angry Summer” by the Australian government’s independent Climate Commission. Australia has been experiencing record heat since September 2012. Central Australia suffered a spate of heatwaves during spring, culminating in …
Mar 11 2013
This is the seventh part in a series about the Caps and Targets Review being conducted by the Australian Government’s independent Climate Change Authority (CCA) this year. Part 1 summarized the global climate crisis, Part 2 explained the importance of the review and how CCA should approach it, Part 3 outlined the role Australia should …
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