All articles
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Continued inaction is not an option at the CBD
Our Pacific Political Advisor Seni Nabou reports back from the first few days of meetings at the UN’s Convention for Biological Diversity (CBD), in Nagoya, Japan. As a Pacific Islander, attending these big world conferences can be overwhelming. The sheer size, grandeur, pomp, ceremony and alien language (diplo-speak) are enough to cower any sane individual…
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Rapid Response: Your First Mission
I just got off the phone from Copenhagen. Our team on the ground have asked for some help from Greenpeace supporters back home, so please read on. Deep inside the Copenhagen conference centre, there’s a closed room of huddled negotiators from a handful of countries, one of which is Australia. They’re cooking up a plan…
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How To Talk To Kids About Climate Change
I’ve been thinking a lot about kids and climate change lately. I’m not just wondering, as I often do, what they’ll think of our response to the crisis and what they’ll do when they are adults. I’ve actually been trying to work out how to explain climate change to them without scaring their little socks…
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Forget Watergate, We Now Have Cairns'gate
International climate negotiations just got dirty, even if the final stage hasn’t started. Australia and New Zealand’s corrupt and underhanded means of getting their way inside the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) carries the stench of colonialism. It is no secret that in this fora they continue to use their small contributions to our poor countries…
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Rio Tinto – Do They See The Writing On The Wall?
The fact that multinational miner Rio Tinto is lobbying the federal government (as reported in the Australia, on July 27th, 2009) is striking and curious for a number of reasons. Firstly, as Australia’s number one uranium miner, it should be no surprise that Rio are looking to develop market share in the nuclear energy production…
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Choosing Between Nothing and Worse-than-nothing
Today, 12 environmental organisations representing more than 400,000 Australians launched Plan B, calling for immediate action on climate change in the absence of an effective policy to price greenhouse pollution and cut emissions. Penny Wong once said that the Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, as a vehicle for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, was “no Ferrari”.…
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Climate Action Dates for Your Diary
Michelle Hunt is one of our new interns working on public engagement. She’s been busy organising a series of public talks on climate change lined up for June and July. I started my internship with Greenpeace six weeks ago wanting to make a real difference by being proactive in the environmental movement. To be honest,…
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Budget Aftermath: Part 2, "A Turning Tide"
It’s a day on from my initial report back on the budget and I’ve been trying to make sure I’m not getting carried away with the size of the renewable energy funding. After years of budgets being handed down that do the square root of not much for real climate solutions, I’m naturally inclined to…
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Budget Aftermath: Part 1, or "Hope!"
I’ve had quite a lot of time to contemplate tonight’s federal budget, having spent four hours in the Treasury lock-up with papers open to pages numbering into the 300s and a confused look on my face shouting: “WHAT? … HUH? … OK, so it’s $100 coming from this department, but only allocated after the first…
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Was climate change a key factor in Darfur?
It’s a question posed by Stephan Faris in his new book Forecast: The Consequences of Climate Change, From the Amazon to the Arctic. Tee Lim, our volunteer Communications Intern, reviews the book. Forecast is a relatively quick and accessible account of the many and varied ways in which climate change is affecting regions and communities,…