Take your seats, ladies and gentlemen, for Australia’s annual gas pantomime, guaranteed to scare the wits out of struggling consumers. Every year it’s the same tired script, where the villain is cast as the hero, and crisis is averted in the nick of time. Hurrah! The heating stayed on for another winter. Standing ovation. Frack that

As I watched the fires in Los Angeles unfold in January this year, my mind of course reflected on the 1999-2000 Black Summer bushfires in Australia. Both these seasons have wrought significant damage to humans and other animals, and to land, infrastructure and property. There has been a huge personal, collective and financial toll involved.

“An Albanese Labor government will restore Australia’s climate leadership, and listen and act on Pacific island warnings of the existential threat of climate change.” Despite a clear election campaign commitment to listen to Pacific Island nations and act on climate change, the Australian government continues to enable and encourage new and expanded fossil fuel projects. When it

Getting coal for Christmas is supposed to be a bad thing. But for Australia’s coal mines, all their Christmases seem to have come at once!

It’s like an episode of Utopia or Yes Minister – just a week out from the government’s Global Nature Positive Summit, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek approved three whopping coal mine extensions in NSW.

The last thing Australia energy market needs is nuclear power. The data is clear – more renewables will lead to cheaper electricity.

Barely a week goes by without another shrill headline about a supposed gas shortage and alarmist claims that the lights will go out unless multinational companies are allowed to extract more gas.

Whenever you see these headlines or hear scary claims from the gas lobby, there are two things you need to know.

Mining companies love to talk about how much they contribute to Australia’s economy. But really their biggest “contribution” is their profits – and they want to keep more of those.

The mining industry is now surely the biggest whinger in the Australian economy. This week it launched an all-out assault on the federal government at Minerals Week in Canberra, with chief executive of the mining industry’s chief lobby group the Minerals Council, Tania Constable, warning the government: “Undermine it at your peril.” Relative to its

In the wake of the Reserve Bank’s latest forecasts, Treasurer Jim Chalmers is facing calls that government should cut back on infrastructure investment to relieve inflation pressures and free up workers and resources to build much-needed housing.

My children are aged three and four. They love anything with super powers – Spiderman, vampires, Paw Patrol, everything.

A tobacco-style ban on fossil fuel advertising would be a decisive win for Australia – and the climate.

Canberra doesn’t really have a fossil fuel industry, which perhaps explains why we lead the country in decarbonising our economy.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has just approved a new coal seam gas pipeline in Queensland.

While money can’t buy everything, the Australian Government can ‘buy’ a lower Consumer Price Index (CPI).

Nobody likes to be hoodwinked, but that’s what big companies are essentially doing when they engage in greenwashing – giving consumers the false impression they have business practices that help the environment instead of harming it.

If Australia is to use and produce more fossil fuels than we are now, the rest of our climate policy amounts to tinkering at the edges, writes Rod Campbell.

It’s hard to believe in 2024 we still have Governments pretending we need to expand fossil fuel production to “help tackle climate change”.

With the Future Gas Strategy, government policy has entered a backward land where logic is reversed, writes Stephen Long.

Can you imagine Qatar or Saudi Arabia panicking about a gas or oil shortage?

You can’t prevent people from having bad ideas and you can’t prevent people from talking about their bad ideas.

While last year’s robodebt royal commission exposed a shocking lack of ethics among senior ranks of the Australian public service, the systemic condition still largely seems to be regarded as an aberration.

Jigsaw Farms, long held up as a shining star of carbon neutral farming, is no longer carbon neutral, although only just. 

Nuclear energy really is remarkable.

When AUKUS was announced, the ANU was quick off the mark to cash in.

The United Nations Climate Conference (COP28) in Dubai has played out like a dystopian satire. Hosted by a petrostate, the official facilitator of the proceedings, Sultan Al Jaber, is also the chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ state oil company—if you scripted it, it wouldn’t be believable.

The hydrogen dream has become widespread in the Australian climate conversation: apparently, with it, we’re going to decarbonise Japan, Korea, and the world! Is this ambitious vision a genuine step towards a greener future or merely a diversion from ongoing fossil fuel expansion?

Old-fashioned climate change denialism is the risk you run when you hold an international climate conference in a Middle Eastern petrostate and hand the reins to an oil baron, writes Stephen Long, but in practice, is Australia really much better?