Two interconnected images of the global environmental crisis: People crowd around an emergency food depot. The supply runs out — again. There are scuffles and then stones thrown. The crowd disperses only when UN forces fire over their heads. A camera pans across a scene of total devastation, focusing on a small reddish dot moving… Read more »
environment
Bankrupting Dissent
The federal minister for destroying the environment, Peter Garrett, has made a series of outrageous pro-business decisions, including approval of the Gunns pulp mill near Launceston, the dredging of Port Phillip Bay and a desalination plant near Wonthaggi. All three projects pose considerable risks to the environment and have led to the formation of local… Read more »
A question of power
At the very sharp end of the climate change crisis is the energy question. Most of the planet’s electricity generation is derived from coal, and all motorised transport requires the consumption of fossil fuel or other organically derived material. Coal, oil, gas and so-called “biofuels” are all based on carbon. When carbon is burnt, it… Read more »
Despair is not an option!
Every night, a strange thing happens at Snowy Hydro’s Tumut 3 power station. Water that flows downhill from the Talbingo reservoir is pumped uphill for use the next day. The huge network of dams is nearly dry. It’s an excellent example of how a sustainable economy needs a sustainable environment. This country has neither. Unless… Read more »
The Victorian government must end the dangerous farce of privatised public transport!
Poorly maintained signals led to this derailment on 3 May 2007. No one was injured — this time. Melbourne’s most modern trains are a safety hazard. They should not be in service. One model, built by Siemens, has a fundamental brake problem that will only be fixed with a costly engineering retrofit. The other, built… Read more »
Red Earth: A socialist perspective on climate change
No one in charge. When I was a teenager, I stayed in the Victorian goldfields town of Castlemaine. Even then, it was obvious to me that something was wrong in the way people dealt with the natural world. The ecosystem was so stressed that you could see the box forest disappearing. In that case, unregulated… Read more »
Water is a feminist issue
Victoria burning, Melburnians choking from the smoke, parched land everywhere. This is life in the southeast corner of the earth’s driest continent. Across the Pacific, on the U.S.-Canadian border, pre-Christmas storms flooded homes, cut power and blocked main roads. On Christmas day, post-tsunami Aceh and North Sumatra were once again under water and mud. These… Read more »
Good planets are hard to find: Only planet-wide socialism can repair our damaged home
On December 27, 2004, a work colleague was holidaying at Robe, on the south coast of South Australia. About mid-morning the tide suddenly rushed out, then in, then out again. After a while, the sea returned to normal. My co-worker didn’t know it at the time, but he had seen the Indian Ocean tsunami passing…. Read more »
Terminator Trio Defeated!
The UN Convention on Biological Diversity met in Brazil last March. On the agenda was terminator, or gene sterilisation, technology. Three governments — Australia, Canada and New Zealand — were dubbed the “Terminator Trio” when they teamed up to try and overturn a global moratorium on terminator technology, which prevents farmers saving and reusing seeds…. Read more »
Port Phillip Dredging – Corporate Welfare and Environmental Vandalism
Melbourne has an asset that many of the world’s great cities must envy. It’s Port Phillip Bay, a 2000 square kilometre inlet teeming with marine life, despite 170 years of urban pollution. Fishing, tourism and recreation mean that the bay is one of Australia’s most economically productive bodies of water. Directly and indirectly, it generates… Read more »
