February 2020

Until we stop approving gas and coal projects, there’s no transition taking place

by Ebony Bennett in The Canberra Times

by Ebony Bennett[Originally published in The Canberra Times, 08 February 2020]There’s a hole where Australia’s climate and energy policy should be and the Morrison Government just keeps digging. The cheapest, cleanest solutions are right in front of its nose and yet it keeps subsidising the problem. In the face of a climate-fuelled bushfire crisis the

Scott Morrison talks big about pressure on gas prices but says nothing about flooding markets with coal

by Richard Denniss in The Guardian

by Richard Denniss[Originally published on Guardian Australia, 05 February 2020] If you think the quality of debate about climate change and bushfires is bad, allow me to give you a glimpse into the debate over the link between the supply and demand of fossil fuels and their price. Spoiler alert – according to the Morrison

January 2020

No one job is worth saving at the expense of climate catastrophe. Not even Scott Morrison’s

by Richard Denniss in The Guardian

by Richard Denniss[Originally published on Guardian Australia, 22 January 2020] Would the prime minister rule out protecting Australians from terrorism if it cost a single job? Would he promise that no nurse, teacher or other public servant would be sacked in pursuit of a budget surplus? Of course not. But when it comes to preventing

Most conservatives know prevention is better than cure – except when it comes to climate change

by Richard Denniss in The Guardian

by Richard Denniss[Originally published by the Guardian Australia] If only Scott Morrison was as willing to spend money preventing climate change as he is to spend it on disaster repair. The idea that a “stitch in time saves nine” and “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” was once central to the conservative approach

Fund fire recovery with climate tax

by Richard Denniss[Originally published in the Australian Financial Review, 07 Jan 2020] If Australia and other countries meet their current emission reduction targets bushfires are still going to get much, much worse. Over the past century, humans have caused the world to warm by one degree, but if Australia and the rest of the world

November 2019

Australia’s dirty great secret

by Fergus Green & Richard Denniss[Originally published in the Australian Financial Review, 26 November 2019] The amount of fossil fuels that companies and governments around the world expect to extract over the coming decade is startlingly out of kilter with the imperative to maintain a stable climate system – and Australia is a large part

I was there for the 2003 fires. Let’s not let the same thing happen again

by Ebony Bennett in The Canberra Times

by Ebony Bennett[Originally published in the Canberra Times, 18 November 2019] I was a cub reporter working in the press gallery for the Sydney Morning Herald when bushfires engulfed Canberra in 2003, claiming four lives and almost 500 homes. It’s seared in my memory, as I’m sure it is for a lot of Canberrans. I’ve been thinking

Climate change makes bushfires worse. Denying the truth doesn’t change the facts

by Richard Denniss in The Guardian

by Richard Denniss[Originally published on the Guardian Australia, 13 November 2019] It’s not just climate protesters who powerful voices are trying to silence in Australia, it’s anyone who wants to talk about the bigger-picture causes to the problems Australia is facing. In modern Australia it has become “inappropriate” to talk about why our rivers are

The Prime Minister needs to get real on climate

by Richard Denniss[Originally published in the Financial Review, 11 November 2019] Despite Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s best efforts, Australia has a target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions in 31 years’ time. His suggestions that Labor’s renewable energy target of 50 per cent by 2030 is an economic “wrecking ball” is as pointless and wrong

The “quiet Australians” are standing up to big coal and a state government that is failing to take action on the climate emergency

by Mark Ogge in The Fifth Estate

by Mark Ogge[Originally published on The Fifth Estate, 12 November 2019] It is a terrible irony that the coal being mined in New South Wales is helping fuel the state’s unprecedented increase in extreme heat, fires and drought.  Every year, coal produced in NSW results in about 500 million tonnes of greenhouse gases being pumped

Morrison doesn’t like it when the quiet Australians start to speak up | Integrity Commissions | Governance & Government Agencies | Climate Change

by Ebony Bennett in The Canberra Times

by Ebony Bennett[Originally published in the Canberra Times, 02 November 2019] In his government’s latest free-speech crackdown, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has vowed to outlaw civil society groups campaigning against Australian businesses that work with companies with dubious environmental, human rights or ethical records. Morrison’s plan would criminalise, for example, the thousands of young people

October 2019

Morrison’s claim of an Australian gold in per capita renewables is not true

by Tom Swann in RenewEconomy

by Tom Swann[Originally published on Renew Economy, 27 October 2019] Despite promises to cut emissions, Australia’s emissions are still rising. But at the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month, prime minister Scott Morrison rejected criticism by claiming that “Australia now has the highest per capita investment in clean energy technologies of anywhere

September 2019

When Scott Morrison lectured CEOs about speaking out on climate change, it was quite a fight to pick

by Richard Denniss in The Guardian

by Richard Denniss[Originally Published on Guardian Australia, 18 September 2019] In the same week that the prime minister told chief executives not to get “distracted” by issues like climate change, his National Party colleagues declared war on almond milk. Talk about focusing on the big issues. Needless to say, most business leaders paid as much attention to

August 2019

Australia can no longer dodge responsibility for its fossil fuel exports

by Richie Merzian in The Canberra Times

by Richie Merzian[Originally published in The Canberra Times, 24 August 2019] If fuelling global carbon pollution with fossil fuel exports was an Olympic sport, Australia would get a podium place. New Australia Institute research shows Australia is the third largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world – behind only Russia and Saudi Arabia. This expansive

When it comes to coal, Australia has transitioned away from economics and common sense

by Richard Denniss in The Guardian

by Richard Denniss[Originally published on The Guardian Australia, 21 Augustr 2019] Australia isn’t transitioning away from extracting fossil fuels, it is doubling down on them. That’s right – even though Australia is already the third largest fossil fuel exporter in the world, the federal government still wants to double our coal exports, drill for oil in

A condescending Pacific step down

by Richard Denniss[Originally published in the Australian Financial Review, 20 August 2019] Short-term thinking is often a feature of Australian domestic politics but when it comes to foreign policy, we’ve usually played the long game. Not any more. The Morrison Government is placing 1000 potential coal jobs ahead of its ‘Pacific Step Up’, announced in 2017 to

We’re wasting too much energy on nuclear talk

by Richie Merzian in The Canberra Times

by Richie Merzian[Originally published in the Canberra Times, 10 August 2019] Late last Friday – a timeslot where ministers are known to announce policies they are most proud of – the Minister for Energy, Angus Taylor, ordered a parliamentary inquiry into nuclear energy.  Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus

July 2019

The attacks on Bob Brown for opposing a windfarm are exhausting and hypocritical

by Richard Denniss in The Guardian

by Richard Denniss[Originally published on Guardian Australia, 24 July 2019] How many wedge-tailed eagles is a black-throated finch worth? No doubt there’s an economist out there willing to have a crack at answering that question, but the right of Australian politics seem to have already figured it out without so much as community survey: eagles are important

June 2019

Adani mine approval shows climate change debate reaches new level of lunacy

by Ebony Bennett in The Canberra Times

by Ebony Bennett[Originally published in The Canberra Times, 15 June 2019] Australia’s debate on the climate crisis reached a new level of lunacy this past week. Almost nowhere else in the world is the climate debate so divorced from reality. Firstly, Adani’s groundwater plan was approved by the Queensland government in a rushed process. This

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